Patrick E McLean

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

@dsawyer @oldbooksguy A Technique for Producing Ideas. James Webb Young. Page for page, heaviest hitter, I've ever read. But then my theory of creativity is to have a lot of ideas and kill most of them. https://t.co/dbxuykGh35

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

@JmsOlvr @SupremacyWoke @Noahpinion No you fool, the Demoblicans!

[Clockwork Revolution @ClockworkGame]

This is Clockwork Revolution.

An extended look at just one conversation, with moral choice, and deep reactivity that will follow you through time. Screwing someone over may have far-reaching and unexpected consequences.

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

@Kaybearmomma Eeeh..... But I do have some new content coming in due time. https://t.co/qW8JIvztEW

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

A parasite that has been eating people for 3,500 years is about to be wiped off the planet. It infected 3.5 million people in 1986. Last year, it infected 10. And I have not seen it make a single front page.

It is called Guinea worm. You drink contaminated water from a pond in a poor village. A year later, a worm up to three feet long starts coming out of your leg through a burning blister. There is no pill that stops it and no surgery that works. You wrap the worm around a stick and pull it out slowly, over days or weeks, inch by inch. If you rush, the worm breaks inside you and causes a fresh infection.

Guinea worm is ancient. Preserved worms have been pulled out of Egyptian mummies from around 1000 BCE. The Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical scroll from 1550 BCE, describes pulling the worm out with a stick. For three and a half thousand years, that was the best humans could do.

Then in 1986, public health workers decided to kill the parasite off. They had no vaccine and no drug. What they had was cheap cloth water filters and a small army of volunteers willing to walk from village to village for decades.

The plan was simple. Give everyone who drinks from a pond a cloth filter to strain out the tiny water fleas that spread the parasite. Then send volunteers walking house to house, year after year, teaching people how to use the filters and keeping anyone with an emerging worm out of the water.

It worked. From 3.5 million cases a year to 10. Four were in Chad, four in Ethiopia, two in South Sudan. The other four countries where the worm used to be common, Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Mali, had zero human cases for the second year in a row. The World Health Organization has already certified 200 countries as Guinea worm free. Six are left.

The last hurdle is dogs. Cameroon had 445 infected animals last year and Chad had 147, so a lot of the remaining work is on animals, not humans. Strays get leashed, and crews treat ponds to kill any remaining worms. The campaign keeps watching until the number hits zero.

When Guinea worm hits zero, it becomes the second human disease ever erased from the planet. The first was smallpox. It will also be the first parasite humans have ever wiped out, and the first disease ever ended without a single dose of medicine. Volunteers walked village to village with cloth filters for 40 years. Now a plague from the age of the pharaohs is about to be gone.

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

https://t.co/nmClra9BvP

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

Feeling low? Motivation in short supply. Sick of overly sappy self-help advice? Then remember:

"There is no 'Can't' in Cannibal."

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

4/4 I'm busting my ass on Clockwork Revolution to give a break to unhappy misfit kids of all ages, everywhere.

Because I remember who I was when I was 17. And what a game meant to me.

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

1/4 I have come to realize I have greatly underestimated the value of entertainment and escape.

I think about the lonely, unhappy kid I was in 1989. And how much of my life has been spent honoring the things that saw me through.

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

3/4 To give someone a break; To transport them to another world; To give them a laugh, a feeling of awe or just a momentary distraction;

This is noble work. It's honorable. It makes a difference. It's worth sacrifice.

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

What game brought you joy when you were low?

Not just entertained you—but made you feel like somebody out there got you?

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

To give someone a break; To transport them to another world; To give them a laugh, a feeling of awe or just a momentary distraction;

The older I get, the more I realize this is noble work.

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

That's why books, movies and games are so important to me. They are an escape hatch with none other is available.

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

I like to think about thing in longer historical cycles, But nobody lives in the grand sweep of human history. We live in moments. And a lot of those moments aren't that great.

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

Now I'm writing for Clockwork Revolution.

The path here was strange and beautiful.

Full circle, from the game that made me feel less alone to creating for unhappy and unhappy kids of all ages, everywhere.
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[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

THREAD: From Wasteland to Wasteland

In 1989, I was very unhappy. Books were my escape, but I also played video games.

Among them: Wasteland. A post-apocalyptic cRPG where you could shoot, talk, sneak, or use items in hilarious ways.

It made me feel like somebody out there got me.

[Patrick E McLean @PatrickEMcLean]

In 2022, Brian Fargo called again. New game. New opportunity.

"Write Guy Ritchie/Peaky Blinders scenes for this 1900s steampunk game."

I tore into it with abandon.