Data Sparrow

An online doujin circle specializing in tabletop games, videogame mods and music publishing. Otherwise known as the "Psycho Patrol R Zine guys". Find us at: https://datasparrow.net/

[datasparrow]

Greetings from Mankind's Reach

(We know, we know, we're late.)

[probablyasocialecologist]

“Musk talks about Mars as a lifeboat for humanity, which is among the very stupidest things that someone could say,” says Adam Becker, an astrophysicist and author of the book More Everything Forever, which outlines the messianic, sci-fi fantasies of the tech oligarchs. “There are so many reasons why it’s such a bad idea, and this is not about, ‘Oh, we’ll never have the technology to live on Mars.’ That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that Earth is always going to be a better option no matter what happens to Earth. Like, we could get hit with an asteroid the size of the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could explode every single nuclear weapon, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could have the worst-case scenario for climate change, and Earth would still be more habitable. Any cursory examination of any of the facts about Mars makes it very clear.”

What You’ve Suspected Is True: Billionaires Are Not Like Us

[wire-smith]

I really like sci-fi stories where people have to go off and terraform a planet, or figure out how to rebuild civilization after some disaster, or ideally both. "The last ark-ship leaving Earth right before it becomes uninhabitable" sort of deal. But lately I've been coming around to this same idea, that it will always be more practical to try to save Earth than to try to start over elsewhere.

I was reading one story where the apocalypse was impossibly-rising oceans. Like, water is appearing from *waves hand* the Earth's crust or something, and literally all dry surface land on Earth is going to become underwater in X years. Part of the story was about a giant research project to invent FTL to send a few hundred humans to a nearby star which might have a habitable planet. You know what they were hoping to find? A planet with liquid water. Their plan was to descend from their starship and restart civilization using just the tools they brought with them, on a world with no life and no breathable air and the wrong gravity and the wrong temperate and the wrong sunlight and the wrong day-night cycle, just because it had liquid water. You know where else has liquid water? The flooded Earth you just abandoned. Instead of researching starship technology, you could have spent that time loading up all the same civilization-restarter tools into boats.

And this is really true of any futuristic apocalypse scenario. If you can terraform Mars to have a thick oxygen atmosphere, why not just do that to Earth? Even if you smash an ice comet into Earth and destroy basically everything, Earth will still be more habitable than Mars! It'll still have roughly the right atmospheric pressure, and magnetic field, and heat balance, and it'll still have whatever life the comet didn't kill... Same with a starshade to cool Venus. Same with excavating asteroids into city-stations. Same with abandoning Sol System entirely and heading to another star. If an ark-ship arrived in a new star system and found Earth-but-choked-by-climate-change, the crew would be ecstatic. They would never have thought to get that lucky. So why bother with the trip? Just stay and fix the damn Earth.

[syzygystardust13]

Honestly i think it's because fixing the Earth requires

1. Grappling with responsibility

2. (and this one is more crucial to me) what to do with all the people who will be killed by the solution.

What I mean by that is if scientists showed up at another star system and found "Not-Earth choked by climate change" they'd be ecstatic because it is, (usually in these stories) uninhabited. And they can crash an ice-asteroid into the planet or change the atmosphere and it doesn't matter if it becomes horribly uninhabitable for a bit because they are in a epaceship/dome/whatever that can support a small team.

But if you do that on EARTH you have to grapple with all the people who are going to DIE because of the solution or while waiting for it. Or you have the separate problem of creating life support systems not for a small team of scientists but for a global population. So the problem isn't just "fix earth" but "fix Earth while keeping it habitable enough to not commit mass murder" and that's trickier and could be seen as less "fun" (Idk I think that would be a cool story but I've been told my tastes are unusual and unpopular so?)

I will say I'm all for "Fix Earth" as a real life position because...we aren't living in a scifi novel and we DO need to care about this planet and it WILL be easier to fix Earth than to terraform Mars. (And let's be real, Musk only cares about what looks cool and expensive, not what's a functional solution).

But I can see why in apocalypse scenario sci fi they don't take that route very often.

[sci-fi-art-666]

Philippe "Manchu" Bouchet

[uss-edsall]

every girl wants to get in a vehicle and flip 3-6 switches overhead in the process of turning it on

[cipheramnesia]

When I’m going to get frozen waffles and ramen from Walgreens.

[stirfriedweasel]

More things should be operated with big thumb switches and knobs and dials and shit.

[cipheramnesia]

Me, getting a drink of water at night.

[cabbageheadgames]

me, waking up with a stiff arm

[vexwerewolf]

Inner Sphere Mechwarrior and Clanner (both men)

Inner: I just, uhhhhh...

Clanner: You find me sexually attractive, but you are concerned that I will treat you contemptuously for it.

Inner: ... yeah.

Clanner: [placing hand on the inner's shoulder] There is no need to worry. If anything, I find your attraction flattering. You have good taste. You are also reasonably attractive.

Inner: [perking up] Oh! Well, thanks, I guess.

Clanner: Homophobia is one of the primitive bigotries we returned to the Inner Sphere to eradicate. As for me, however, I am afraid I must decline. You see, I do not fuck freebirths.

Clanner: [walks away]

Inner: ???

[batsandboba]

“scientists don’t want you know” is a phrase that always cracks me up because if you actually meet a scientist they will be shaking and crying like an overstimulated chihuahua with the need to let you know

[datasparrow]

NEW RELEASE: "ALLSEA: A PANTHALASSA ZINELET"

Well would you look at that, our first release since we opened up this account! This is ALLSEA: A Panthalassa Zinelet, a 28-page companion zine for Meia Calca's debut point-and-click adventure: PANTHALASSA.

This isn't the first time we make one of these, as we'd also made one for the release of Psycho Patrol R. That one was called "ORIENTATION", and it was the prototype for this kind of thing - which we now hope to make a semi-regular part of our yearly release schedule. In a nutshell, it's a diegetic manual / hintbook, styled after the kind of old videogame manuals that tried to give themselves a little pizzazz by framing themselves as in-universe documents. It also has a notes section, although the .zip comes with a version that strips it out, reducing pagecount to 24 for cheaper printing. We hope you can check it and the game it accompanies out, as they're both very cool and very pretty. And also pleasantly cheap (the zine is PWYWY), which is important at times like these.

[datasparrow]

A few sample pages from the zine, to include the foreword and touchstone pages, both carryovers from ORIENTATION.

[datasparrow]

NEW RELEASE: "ALLSEA: A PANTHALASSA ZINELET"

Well would you look at that, our first release since we opened up this account! This is ALLSEA: A Panthalassa Zinelet, a 28-page companion zine for Meia Calca's debut point-and-click adventure: PANTHALASSA.

This isn't the first time we make one of these, as we'd also made one for the release of Psycho Patrol R. That one was called "ORIENTATION", and it was the prototype for this kind of thing - which we now hope to make a semi-regular part of our yearly release schedule. In a nutshell, it's a diegetic manual / hintbook, styled after the kind of old videogame manuals that tried to give themselves a little pizzazz by framing themselves as in-universe documents. It also has a notes section, although the .zip comes with a version that strips it out, reducing pagecount to 24 for cheaper printing. We hope you can check it and the game it accompanies out, as they're both very cool and very pretty. And also pleasantly cheap (the zine is PWYWY), which is important at times like these.

[datasparrow]

Shortform Bumper 3: Going All City Once again edited by our main man MINIMIS, this shortform video shows off our latest videogame mod: RFLxBRC, a Bomb Rush Cyberfunk modpack themed after our own scifi skateboarding TTRPG, Radio Free Lutesse. Get it now on GAMEBANANA!

[datasparrow]

RFLxBRC promotional visuals, also by our main man MINIMIS.

[datasparrow]

Shortform Bumper 3: Going All City Once again edited by our main man MINIMIS, this shortform video shows off our latest videogame mod: RFLxBRC, a Bomb Rush Cyberfunk modpack themed after our own scifi skateboarding TTRPG, Radio Free Lutesse. Get it now on GAMEBANANA!

[datasparrow]

Shortform Bumper 2: Return of the Shortform. Another bumper for Radio Free Lutesse, our 1-to-4 players, gmless skate session RPG about misfits and hooligans living, grinding and wiping out in the aftermath of an interstellar war.

Editing by MINIMIS, footage by Alex Bertioli

[g-gundam-pans]

The beams spraying off to the side of this pan were all animated, as were the thruster flares. This resulted in a difficult pan, because no set of beams stretched all the way across the screen without messing with something else. Blend mode "Lighten only" worked well.

[depsidase]

[victusinveritas]

[oof-1984]

[dragon-in-a-fez]

keep thinking about how I wrote in my dissertation about how every time a new form of public/social space emerges it's immediately popular with kids and teenagers who see it as a chance at freedom and then adults colonise it and kick them out. this happened with malls in the 80s and diners in the 50s and pool halls in the 20s. my dad was doing research on this trend in like 1975. and I was like "yeah so this is going to happen to the internet" and then five years later every government suddenly decided to ban kids from everywhere online. I hate being right especially when I don't even get paid for it

[anarchistmemedistro]