#the solarpunk conference

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

The 2024 Solarpunk Conference is almost here! It's on Saturday and it's totally virtual. Christina and I are gonna be there talking about conflict in solarpunk fiction with some extremely rad presenters; I highly encourage you to check it out!

@solarpunkmagazine

[scottishcommune]

Declaration from the first ever World Youth Conference that took place in Paris at the end of last year, as published in Lêgerîn

[solarpunkmagazine]

Solarpunk Conference: Virtual Event on June 29, 2024

Hi, folks! This year’s Solarpunk Conference will take place virtually on June 29th, 2024. Here is a link to the website if you’re interested in listening to a variety of panels talk about all things solarpunk.

Solarpunk Magazine co-EIC Brianna Castagnozzi will speak on a panel about conflict within solarpunk stories. The panel will also feature podcast hosts and scholars Ariel Kroon and Christina De La Rocha and editors and writers Holly Schofield, Jack Nicholls, and Selena Middleton.

We hope to see you there!

(Note that Solarpunk Magazine is not affiliated with the conference; it is its own event).

[pastoralpunk]

I wanted to signal-boost this upcoming virtual Solarpunk Conference and its associated crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. The conference itself is set to be held on June 24, 2023. Invited speakers include Andrew Sage of the Andrewism YouTube channel, as well as Sarena Ulibarri of the solarpunk anthology Glass and Gardens, as well as others.

To clarify, I am completely unassociated with the conference. I am sharing this information out of my own personal interest in Andrew Sage's activities and the broader solarpunk movement.

You may be interested in reserving tickets for yourself or solidarity tickets allowing for another person with limited means to attend. Otherwise, you can contribute to this crowdfunding campaign in order to help cover funds going to logistics, accessibility features, a fair wage for speakers, and EDI and decolonization needs.

Some members of the team behind this conference can be found in the comments of this reddit post, answering questions re: ticket pricing and the accessibility of the conference.

Finally, here is the conference's linktr.ee, containing links to a code of ethics, a Discord server, and more.

That's all! Stay punk, solarpunks. 🔆

[southernsolarpunk]

There’s a virtual solarpunk conference on June 24??? And Andrewism is a keynote speaker??

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Stinkpump Linkdump

Next Tuesday (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."b

Once again, I greet the weekend with more assorted links than I can fit into my nearly-daily newsletter, so it's time for another linkdump. This is my eleventh such assortment; here are the previous volumes:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I've written a lot about Biden's excellent appointees, from his National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chair Rohit Chopra to FTC Chair Lina Khan to DoJ antitrust boss Jonathan Kanter:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

But I've also written a bunch about how Biden's appointment strategy is an incoherent mess, with excellent appointees picked by progressives on the Unity Task Force being cancelled out by appointees given to the party's reactionary finance wing, producing a muddle that often cancels itself out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/#but-muh-freedumbs

It's not just that the finance wing of the Democrats chooses assholes (though they do!), it's that they choose comedic bunglers. The Dems haven't put anyone in government who's as much of an embarrassment as George Santos, but they keep trying. The latest self-inflicted Democratic Party injury is Prashant Bhardjwan, a serial liar and con-artist who is, incredibly, the Biden Administration's pick to oversee fintech for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC):

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/did-the-occ-hire-a-con-artist-to-oversee-fintech

When the 42 year old Bhardjwan was named Deputy Comptroller and Chief Financial Technology Officer for OCC, the announcement touted his "nearly 30 years of experience serving in a variety of roles across the financial sector." Apparently Bhardjwan joined the finance sector at the age of 12. He's the Doogie Houser of Wall Street:

https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2023/nr-occ-2023-31.html

That wasn't the only lie on Bhardjwan's CV. He falsely claimed to have served as CIO of Fifth Third Bank from 2006-2010. Fifth Third has never heard of him:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-occ-crowned-its-first-chief-fintech-officer-his-work-history-was-a-web-of-lies

Bhardjwan told a whole slew of these easily caught lies, suggesting that OCC didn't do even a cursory background search on this guy before putting him in charge of fintech – that is, the radioactively scammy sector that gave us FTX and innumerable crypto scams, to say nothing of the ever-sleazier payday lending sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

When it comes to appointing corrupt officials, the Biden administration has lots of company. Lots of eyebrows went up when the UN announced that the next climate Conference of the Parties (COP) would be chaired by Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, who is also the chair of Dubai's national oil company. Then the other shoe dropped: leaks revealed that Al-Jaber had colluded with the Saudis to use COP28 to get poor Asian and African nations hooked on oil:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67508331

There's an obvious reason for this conspiracy: the rich world is weaning itself off of fossil fuels. Today, renewables are vastly cheaper than oil and there's no end in sight to the plummeting costs of solar, wind and geothermal. While global electrification faces powerful logistical and material challenges, these are surmountable. Electrification is a solvable problem:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

And once we do solve that problem, we will forever transform our species' relationship to energy. As Deb Chachra explains in her brilliant new book How Infrastructure Works, we would only need to capture 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface to give every person on earth the energy budget of a Canadian (AKA, a "cold American"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

If COP does its job, we will basically stop using oil, forever. This is an existential threat to the ruling cliques of petrostates from Canada to the UAE to Saudi. As Bill McKibben writes, this isn't the first time a monied rich-world industry that had corrupted its host governments faced a similar crisis:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-corrupted-cop

Big Tobacco spent decades fueling science denial, funneling money to sellout scientists who deliberately cast doubt on both sound science and the very idea that we could know anything. As Tim Harford describes in The Data Detective, Darrell Huff's 1954 classic How to Lie With Statistics was part of a tobacco-industry-funded project to undermine faith in statistics itself (the planned sequel was called How To Lie With Cancer Statistics):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. When the families of the people murdered by tobacco disinformation campaigns started winning eye-popping judgments against the tobacco industry, the companies shifted their marketing to the Global South, on the theory that they could murder poor brown people with impunity long after rich people in the north forced an end to their practice. Big Tobacco had a willing partner in Uncle Sam for this project: the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the world's poorest countries into accepting "Investor-State Dispute Settlements" as part of their treaties. These ISDS clauses allowed tobacco companies to sue governments that passed tobacco control legislation and force them to reverse their democratically enacted laws:

https://ash.org/what-is-isds-and-what-does-it-mean-for-tobacco-control/

As McKibben points out, the oil/climate-change playbook is just an update to the tobacco/cancer-denial conspiracy (indeed, the same think-tanks and PR agencies are behind both). The "Oil Development Sustainability Programme" – the Orwellian name the Saudis gave to their plan to push oil on poor countries – maps nearly perfectly onto Big Tobacco's attack on the Global South. Nearly perfectly: second-hand smoke in Indonesia won't give Americans cancer, but convincing Africa to go hard on fossil fuels will contribute to an uninhabitable planet for everyone, not just poor people.

This is an important wrinkle. Wealthy countries have repeatedly demonstrated a deep willingness to profit from death and privation in the poor world – but we're less tolerant when it's our own necks on the line.

What's more, it's far easier to put the far-off risks of emissions out of your mind than it is to ignore the present-day sleaze and hypocrisy of corporate crooks. When I quit smoking, 23 years ago, my doctor told me that if my only motivation was avoiding cancer 30 years from now, I'd find it hard to keep from yielding to temptation as withdrawal set in. Instead, my doctor counseled me to find an immediate reason to stay off the smokes. For me, that was the realization that every pack of cigarettes I bought was enriching the industry that invented the denial playbook that the climate wreckers were using to render our planet permanently unsuited for human habitation. Once I hit on that, resisting tobacco got much easier:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/03/i-quit/

Perhaps OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais is worried about that the increasing consensus that Big Oil cynically and knowingly created this crisis. That would explain his new flight of absurdity, claiming that the world is being racist to oil companies, "unjustly vilifying" the industry for its role in the climate emergency:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/27/opec-says-oil-industry-unjustly-vilified-ahead-of-climate-talks-.html

Words aren't deeds, but words have power. The way we talk about things makes a difference to how we act on those things. When discussions of Israel-Palestine get hung up on words, it's easy to get frustrated. The labels we apply to the rain of death and the plight of hostages are so much less important than the death and the hostages themselves.

But how we name the thing will have an enormous impact on what happens next. Take the word "genocide," which Israel hawks insist must not be applied to the bombing campaign and siege in Gaza, nor to the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. On this week's On The Media, Brooke Gladstone interviews Ernesto Verdeja, executive director of The Institute for the Study of Genocide:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/genocide-powerful-word-so-why-its-definition-so-controversial-on-the-media

Verdeja lays out the history of the word "genocide" and connects it to the Israeli government and military's posture on Palestine and Palestinians, and concludes that the only real dispute among genocide scholars is whether the current campaign it itself an act of genocide, or a prelude to an act of genocide.

I'm not a genocide scholar, but I am a Jew who has always believed in Palestinian solidarity, and Verdeja's views do not strike me as outrageous, or (more importantly) antisemitic. The conflation of opposition to Israel's system of apartheid with opposition to Jews is a cheap trick, one that's belied by Israel itself, where there is a vast, longstanding political opposition to Israeli occupation, settlements, and military policing. Are all those Israeli Jews secret antisemites?

Jews are not united in support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians. The hardliners who insist that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic are peddling an antisemitic lie: that all Jews everywhere are loyal to Israel, and that we all take our political positions from the Knesset. Israel hawks only strengthen that lie when they accuse me and my fellow Jews of being "self-hating Jews."

This leads to the absurd circumstance in which gentiles police Jews' views on Israel. It's weird enough when white-nationalist affiliated evangelicals who support Israel in order to further the end-times prophesied in Revelations slam Jews for being antisemitic. But in Germany, it's even weirder. There, regional, non-Jewish officials charged with policing antisemitism have censured Jewish groups for adopting policies on Israel that mainstream Israeli political parties have in their platforms:

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats

Antisemitism is real. As Jesse Brown describes in his recent Canadaland editorial, there is a real and documented rise in racially motivated terror against Jews in Canada, including school shootings and a firebombing. Likewise, it's true that some people who support the Palestinian cause are antisemites:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/is-jesse-a-zionist-editorial/

But to stand in horror at Israel's military action and its vast civilian death-toll is not itself antisemitic. This is obvious – so obvious that the need to say it is a tribute to Israel hardliners – Jewish and gentile – and their ability to peddle the racist lie that Israel is Jews and Jews are Israel, and that every Jew is in support of, and responsible for, Israeli war-crimes and crimes against humanity.

One need not choose between opposition to Hamas and its terror and opposition to Israel and its bombings. There is no need for a hierarchy of culpability. As Naomi Klein says, we can "side with the child over the gun":

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/why-are-some-of-the-left-celebrating-the-killings-of-israeli-jews

Moral consistency is not moral equivalency. If you're a Jew like me who wants to work for an end to the occupation and peace in the region, you could join Jewish Voice For Peace (like me):

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org

Now, for a jarring tone shift. In these weekend linkdumps, I put a lot of thought into how to transition from one subject to the next, but honestly, there's no good transition from Israel-Palestine to anything else (yet – though someday, perhaps). So let's just say, "word games can be important, but they can also be trivial, and here are a few of the latter."

Start with a goodie, from the always brilliant medievalist Eleanor Janeaga, who tackles the weirdos who haunt social media in order to dump on people with PhDs who call themselves "doctor":

https://going-medieval.com/2023/11/29/doctor-does-actually-mean-someone-with-a-phd-sorry/

Janega points out that the "doctor" honorific was applied to scholars for centuries before it came to mean "medical doctor." But beyond that, Janega delivers a characteristically brilliant history of the (characteristically) weird and fascinating tale of medieval scholarship. Bottom line, we call physicians "doctor" because they wanted to be associated with the brilliance of scholars, and thought that being addressed as "doctor" would add to their prestige. So yeah, if you've got a PhD, you can call yourself doctor.

It's not just doctors; the professions do love their wordplay. especially lawyers. This week on Lowering The Bar, I learned about "a completely ludicrous court fight that involved nine law firms that combined for 66 pages of briefing, declarations, and exhibits, all inflicted on a federal court":

https://www.loweringthebar.net/2023/11/federal-court-ends-double-spacing-fight.html

The dispute was over the definition of "double spaced." You see, the judge in the case told counsel they could each file briefs of up to 100 pages of double-spaced type. Yes, 100 pages! But apparently, some lawyer burn to write fat trilogies, not mere novellas. Defendants accused the plaintiffs in this case of spacing their lines a mere 24 points apart, which allowed them to sneak 27 lines of type onto each page, while defendants were confined to the traditional 23 lines.

But (the court found), the defendants were wrong. Plaintiffs had used Word's "double-spacing" feature, but had not ticked the "exact double spacing" box, and that's how they ended up with 27 lines per page. The court refused to rule on what constituted "double-spacing" under the Western District of Tennessee’s local rules, but it ruled that the plaintiffs briefs could fairly be described as "double-spaced." Whew.

That's your Saturday linkdump, jarring tone-shift and all. All that remains is to close out with a cat photo (any fule kno that Saturday is Caturday). Here's Peeve, whom I caught nesting most unhygienically in our fruit bowl last night. God, cats are gross:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53370882459/

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/02/melange/#defendants_motion_to_require_adherence_with_formatting_requirements_of_local_rule_7.1

Stinkpump Linkdump

[aemarling]

After writing Solarpunk Creatures, I decided to join forces with my co-authors to create a workshop at the #solarpunk Conference: Decentering Humans in Solarpunk. How would you create a society that sees other creatures not as things to be exploited or marginalized into extinction but valuable independent of their use to us? https://www.solarpunkconference.com

[solarpunkaestheticweek]

Other Events During Solarpunk Aesthetic Week (Winter Solstice Edition)

As you can imagine, there's a good deal of events happening during Solarpunk Aesthetic Week this season! We wanted to highlight just a few other things that are happening, so they can maybe inspire some of what you do for Solarpunk Aesthetic Week!

Arabic Language Day is on December 18th, and aims to promote and recognize the importance of the Arabic language, encouraging linguistic and cultural diversity and foster understanding. There's often conferences, workshops, and cultural performances held on this day.

It's important we consider the important role and contributions of Arabic people on history and the world, as well as the present and future of Solarpunk! It may also be a good day to jumpstart a new language learning adventure, if you want!

International Migrants Day is also on December 18th! It's a day that seeks to promote the well-being and rights of migrants worldwide, dedicated to recognizing the contributions and achievements of migrants and raising awareness about the need to improve conditions, safety measures, and social acceptance for migrant individuals and families.

Many of us like to imagine solarpunk societies as being entirely or semi-nomadic, traveling to different places depending on the seasons. But an important part of living solarpunk is supporting people right now. How can we support migrants in our communities and improve relations between Indigenous communities and immigrants in a solarpunk future? How would a solarpunk future welcome migrants while protecting and supporting indigenous communities and land? How does the reality of climate refugees in particular impact the development and ideals of a solarpunk future? How would a solarpunk society migrate across the land, and what would it look like?

International Human Solidarity Day is on December 20th, and serves as a reminder to the importance of unity in diversity and the need to work together to address global challenges. There may be various events and activities to mark this event.

Solidarity is an important tenant of Solarpunk, and of activism in general. Consider ways you can show solidarity through art, writing, music, or more. A story about people working together towards a common goal, of supporting one another in the face of a difficult obstacle? An illustration to support a current cause, or of a distant future's fight? Can you do a craft to show solidarity with others?

Winter Solstice is on December 21st in the Northern Hemisphere! It's the astronomical start of the winter season, and symbolizes the death and subsequent rebirth of the sun--the shortest day and longest night of the year.

Often when visualizing Solarpunk, we think of lots of plants and greenery on a bright sunny day. But this isn't what Solarpunk would look like everywhere, or all the time in most places. Let's visualize what we think Solarpunk would look like in fall and winter! How do you solarpunk in the colder months, what kind of crafts do you pick up when things get chilly? What do you imagine a solarpunk society's infrastructure and fashion would look like when the temperatures dip low? What would change and how when our current society is reborn into a more solarpunk one?

Summer Solstice is also December 21st in the Southern Hemisphere, marking the official beginning of the summer season! This is the zenith of the sun's position in the sky, and the longest day of the year.

While things are getting cold for some of us, the temps are just ramping up for others! Let the sun and its energy inspire your works, imbue yourself with the bright and blazing energy of our brightest star!

December 24th is Christmas Eve for those who celebrate! Many people celebrate by gathering with friends and family to enjoy feasts, exchange gifts, and generally enjoy time together.

In a consumerist society, there's a lot of emphasis placed on the gift-giving part of Christmas celebrations--how would it look in a Solarpunk society focused on community building instead? Are you doing anything Solarpunky this Christmas? Let us know!

Is there more we're forgetting? Want to share the way you celebrate a particular event? Sound off and let us know--we'd love to hear about other related events and how you're taking part!

[sanversandfriends]

Looking for Climate Fic Stories

Hi all, the Utopia Climate Fiction Conference was postponed in October and is now being rescheduled as an on-demand event. I'm hoping to organize a panel discussion on climate fic as an immediate response to the precariousness and changeability we're all experiencing and looking for any recommendations for stories (preferably queer) dealing with climate change-- apocalyptic, dystopian, solarpunk, or where the weather might be tangential but impacting the characters in subtler ways.

Would be grateful for any suggestions. Here's a link to the original event if you'd like more background.

[acesolaris]

Virtual Solarpunk Conference on June 24th

I just stumbled upon this on the YT Channel of the amazing Andrewism. The acess is via this Kickstarter for 60 CA$.

Current schedule as of May 22th, taken from the kickstarter page. It's super Important that as many people as possible can join this, bc this is the beginning of an actual organisation.

[ ID: Schedule: Opening 8:30-8:45 MST; Land Acnowledgement 8:45-9:00; Keynote Speaker Andrew Sage 9:00-10:15; Speaker Sarena Ulibarri 10:30-11:00; Speaker TBA 11.15-11.45; Lunch Social 12:00-12:30; Regenerative Agriculture Panel Workshop 1 TBA 12:30-1:45; Research Presentations 2:00-2:45; Panel Discussion 2 TBA ; Climate Grief Workshop 3:00-4:00; Research Presentations 4:15-5:00; Closing 5:00-5:15; After Party Starting 5:30. ID End]

[prshlfrns]

welcome to my little corner of the internet!

🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭

🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖🃁🂭🂺🃜🃚🃖

about me;

hi my name's meg! i'm currently a university sophomore pursuing a bachelor's degree in life sciences, with a track in communication!

woe to thee with fearful eyes,

their lighthouse is burning up

and down goes the ship with which you've wasted your whole lives

interests;

• critical theory

• decolonial studies

• epistemic injustice

• neoliberalization of healthcare and public health

• communication theories

• punk and goth subculture

• solarpunk aesthetic

• parasitology

and oh,

what if the world went and died,

and left you buried in regrets?

currently;

• on christmas break!

• preparing for a philosophy conference

• creating video essays

• creating my own jewelry using clay

• drawing using colored pencils

• reading:

∆ the routledge handbook of epistemology

∆ mula tore hanggang palengke

• learning:

∆ harvard principles of biochemistry MOOC for advance studying

links;

• instagram page where i post my topic interests!

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

In 2023, the inaugural Solarpunk Conference was held in virtual space, bringing together over 150 attendees, 18 presenters, and creating a palpable sense of the solarpunk community. This episode, Ariel chats with conference organizers Charles Valsechi, Lindsay Jane, and Kees Schuller about the genesis of the conference, the inspiration for its theme, as well as a little preview of what they are hoping to see at the 2024 Solarpunk Conference: Rays of Resilience.

You can go to https://www.solarpunkconference.com/ to check out The Solarpunk Conference, access The Solarpunk Conference Journal, and buy tickets. You can also check out the channel  @solarpunkconference  on YouTube for recordings of last year’s presentations, and stop by Lindsay Jane's channel  @TheSolarpunkScene  for more solarpunky content!

[arielkroon]

Some updates...

It’s been a minute. Here’s what I’ve been up to… I published another article with Unsustainable Magazine on apocalyptic desire I have a few papers and conference presentations forthcoming; check my Publications pages for those The recording of my panel presentation at The Solarpunk Conference is now up on their YouTube channel. I’m now part of the Low-Carbon Research Methods Group I’m also…

[bumblebeeappletree]

Environmental activist Xiye Bastida discusses her experiences so far at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, pointing out the differences between the experiences activists in the Global North and Global South are having with the climate movement. The UN Climate Change Conference is bringing together activists, politicians, and organizations from all over the world to tackle the climate crisis.

This video was created in collaboration with Nature's Newsroom.

#Earth #Environment #ClimateCrisis #NowThis

[toadstoolgardens]

We are in a climate emergency. Climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the world. How can we avoid the worst case scenario?

End fossil fuel extraction.

Dramatically reduce methane emissions.

Restore and protect natural carbon sinks.

Quadruple solar and wind capacity and triple renewable energy investments by 2030.

We need to act NOW and we need to act TOGETHER: individuals, businesses, and governments.

Source: earthrise.studio on Instagram, link to post

Learn more about COP26 here.

[thejaymo]

I went to the The London Science Fiction Research Community Conference yesterday:

Organic Systems: Environments, Bodies and Cultures in Science Fiction

Though often understood in ecological terms, the word ‘environment’ can also be viewed more widely as the surroundings and conditions of a specific system—whether they be mechanical, biological, social or chemical. Culture arises from and then informs these systems, becoming itself a further component of environments. Science fictional texts have explored the interactions between culture, environments and bodies on a wide spectrum of scale: from the level of a planetary biosphere or climate system (e.g. terraforming) to a single body or organ (e.g. genetic engineering). This conference will gather Science Fiction researchers, critics, authors and readers together to discuss intersections between cultural and organic systems in all forms of SF media.

Dr Rhys Williams spoke on 'Solarpunks or sunken poles - visions of alternative energy futures’

Great discussion, a fascinating day!