Reading the comments on a video discussing (and, admittedly, debunking) the practicality of humankind crafting a Dyson swarm, using Mercury as a matériel source – it's an experience.

This is an absurdly visionary project; perhaps not vastly beyond our current capabilities, but certainly an idea that demands huge investments of time and materials, and a few technological breakthroughs. It is a wild, speculative, creative, and hopeful option that might solve a future problem; a person considering it or talking about it might expect the same style of thoughts and comments. Hopeful. Wild. Creative.

Sadly, every time I see Just Folks discussing a blue-sky idea like this, comments tend to fall into one of two camps:

• "uh, maybe in a million years"
• "sure, if we invent (semi-ridiculous ultra-technology) first"

Boiled down to their respective essences:

• "we'll never get there"
• "we're not even capable of doing the things we'd need to begin"

How incredibly defeatist! There's very little wonder, almost no imagination in those reactions; they are responses more appropriate to confrontation than presentation.

First post time.
If you don't know me already, I'm a bit shocked you're here! I'm Thraeryn, The Embodiment of RED. This is my new blog.
I often find myself wanting to write pieces a bit too long for most social media, and after reviewing the submission process for the New York Times' "Opinions" section, I thought:

Why not start a new blog?
. . . Again?

So! Here we are, using a static site generator – which is such a decidedly new thing for me – called Zola. It takes funny little Markdown files, tosses them into a court-bouillon of templates and inheritances, and produces a fine course of HTML dishes. Zola requires I learn its ways and methods, then think in them; it's A LOT, and I might not get to explore some of its more involved or nuanced capabilities for a damned long time.

For now, it's enough to have this, here, ready when needed.