Distracted by Bright Shiny Objects

What Japanese knotweed can teach us about how fucked we are.

One of my favorite Substacks is run by my friend and fellow doomer Sam Mitchell, who posts using the alias Hambone Littletale. A few days ago, Hambone posted an alarming video about the possibility that his “Bugs in a Jar Farm” was about to be ransacked by a non-native plant known as Japanese knotweed. Little farm of horrors?

In his Substack video posted on June 22, 2026, titled “Invasive Species From Hell Attacking New York, and I am NOT Talking About Wild Parsnip or Goldenrod,” Hambone said,

I would rather roll around naked in a field of wild parsnip than deal with the living Hell of motherfucking Japanese knotweed. I am so fucked.

I had never heard of Japanese knotweed before and had no idea why Hambone was so upset. So I asked Grok AI about it:

A small patch of Japanese knotweed appears unnoticed along a stream on your farm. Within 2–3 years it explodes across 40+ acres, forming dense bamboo-like thickets that choke out all crops, pasture, and native vegetation. Rhizomes punch through drainage pipes, crack concrete foundations of barns and silos, and destabilize riverbanks, causing erosion and flooding. Machinery gets tangled and damaged. Forage and cash crops are lost; livestock have no grazing.

Eradication attempts fail repeatedly because even a thumbnail-sized root fragment regrows. The infestation spreads to neighboring farms, triggering lawsuits and insurance denials. Property value plummets, bank loans are called in, and selling the land becomes nearly impossible without massive remediation costs. The farm effectively becomes a quarantined wasteland for a decade or more.

What does any of this have to do with the collapse of global industrial civilization and the sixth great extinction? There’s Japanese knotweed. And then there’s being distracted by bright shiny objects.

Godzilla El Nino battling against Japanese knotweed

Maybe your shiny object is something current to the climate change conversation: the coming Godzilla El Nino or the slowdown of the AMOC or the doomsday (“Thwaites”) glacier or the death of coral reefs or the loss of polar sea ice or sea-surface temperatures or albedo loss or record greenhouse gas levels or breaking seven of nine planetary boundaries or some heatwave, flood or fire.

Or maybe your shiny object is some type of climate solution: the growth of wind/solar or electrification or carbon capture or biochar or sustainable agriculture or resilient communities or heat pumps or hydrogen or de-growth or carbon pricing or nuclear or net-zero.

Or maybe your shiny object is the activist group or non-profit you belong to: let’s throw more soup, super-glue more hands, spike more trees, close down more freeways, bomb more oil pipelines, chain ourselves to more banks, and flotilla our way to freedom.

Or maybe your shiny object is something that causes outrage: the Epstein files or ICE deportations or inflation or Gaza/Israel or Ukraine/Russia or LGTBQ rights or racism or January 6th or the reflecting pool or child abuse or Dr. Faucci or the denial machine and pseudo-science or me using AI.

Bright shiny objects fill my posts. They fill my conversations. They fill all of the social media and news I read. They fill my relationships with friends and family.

I’m not alone. Together these bright shiny objects have created the combined cultural angst that has risen to a screeching crescendo in the short and tragic history of modern industrial civilization.

It’s the pettiness of it all. The small battles constantly being fought to have our pet distraction climb up the mountain of distractions to become a slightly larger distraction. We’re competing for an audience that doesn’t give a fuck.

You’re either with us or against us? Okay, I’m against you. My way or the highway? I’ll take the highway. Dumocrats or Rapepublicans? Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. The bright green lies about the new climate war will not only keep us from saving ourselves, they will kill you first. Oh, and be sure to read my post about the coming Godzilla El Nino.

As Sam would say, all of these bright shiny objects are a “bad hair day” compared to having his farm invaded by Japanese knotweed. In practical terms, there is no going back once the knotweed takes hold. You can’t pull it out or till it out or burn it out or poison it out. Simply put, after the first knotweed arrives at Sam’s farm, it will be just a few years until the knotweed turns all of his farm into an uninhabitable hellscape. It will be a total loss of everything for him.

And that’s the point. That’s where the planet is heading. A total loss of everything. We are living in the future ruins of our once beautiful planet, where every single inch of what used to be our fertile soils, blue oceans and clear skies is now covered by humanity’s collective Japanese knotweed.

For me, beyond the bright shiny objects, life has become very simple. It’s sadness. Deep, profound, heart-aching sadness. As I wrote in my essay, Beyond Grief,

I cannot imagine there can be any stage beyond sadness. This sadness is so overwhelming, so all-consuming, that it takes my breath away. The things I do to cope with the weight of it all are mere distractions from this sadness. Volunteer for a few hours, then sadness. Go for a walk, then sadness. Listen to music, read, visit websites, then sadness. Visit with friends or family, then sadness. Sadness returns every time I have a moment to reflect on the predicament of the present moment.

So, what’s my remedy for Japanese knotweed? There’s only one remedy left. It’s a remedy very few people know about and even fewer use. And although it has always failed for me in the past and is sure to fail again, it at least gives me some direction to guide my path through the world each day.

That remedy?

Just another bright shiny object.