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the premise is strong and the story is impactful. few days after having finished it, though, i feel that something was missing? or it wasn't enough? not sure. anyway, i loved also the afterwards by clipping. regarding the history of the project.

and i have to say that moment of sexual tension in the pool between the two wannabe lovers, beside being super queer, made me so bloody horny on the spot. damn!

@lapis@bookwyrm.social i really want it now.

It took me longer than expected to read this. It's not that I wasn't enjoying it, it's that it's very Heavy.

The whole point of the book is that Nubia knows something is different about her, and has to hide it because whenever she uses her super powers to help people, they assume she's a criminal.

It's really good. Got good parents, good friends.

I ABSOLUTELY recommend reading it, but you may need to pace yourself. This book doesn't hold much back.

Essentially two books in one, the first part offers a comprehensive detailing of the relationship between climate denial and far right parties in Europe, the US, and Brazil, while the second offers a more historical and theoretical explanation. It's pretty hard work, both because it deals with some pretty bleak material (in particular, Bolsonaro's burning of the Amazon, and Trump's firing up of the coal, oil, and gas industries in the US), and, to be frank, because there's just so much there. In particular, the second half covers material such as the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, and the role of Marinetti and Jünger in developing a love of the machine over the natural world, together with an analysis of different forms of denial and the way the right has moved between them.

Well worth the read -- I certainly feel that I've learnt a lot -- but be prepared to put a lot of time and effort into it.

Fukuoka goes on to describe the plight of these trees in the later decades of the twentieth century.

Pines were dying en masse. The Regional Office of Forestry responded by dousing forests with insecticide. The Office hoped to eliminate a particular species of beetle, which were reported to be infecting the pines with nematodes who would feed on fungi within the trunks until the nematodes were so numerous as to block the trees’ vascular systems, resulting in abrupt demise of the beetle‐afflicted pines.

However, Fukuoka’s research indicated that healthy pines were not nourishing enough for the nematodes to thrive within, and even when pathogenic fungi from the dying pines were introduced to the trunks of others, there was little health impact on the trees. Rather, pine physiology only became disrupted in the absence of matsutake. He hypothesised that acid rain was altering the soils, to the great detriment of matsutake for whom they had formed habitat, and that, deprived of their mycorrhizal partner, the pines lost such vigour they quickly succumbed to the onslaught of filamentous fungi who had hitched a ride to Japan on imported lumber.

‘The nematodes and beetles are not the original culprits. They are doing nothing more than clearing away the corpses of the dead and dying trees.’ he concludes ―

[…]

Of course […] there is room for error, but the point is, what the world sees as cause and effect can be deceptive. Although I speak of the cycle of cause and effect, no one really knows what is happening. Still, the Office of Forestry goes out and sprays insecticide all over the forests. Who knows what unforeseen and potentially more serious environmental disaster that may lead to?

⸻ pg. 61