Mar Menor, a 135-square-kilometer (52-square-mile) lagoon in southern Spain, is the only ecosystem in Europe that can be named a victim in a legal case. In September 2022, the Spanish Senate granted the largest saltwater lagoon in the Mediterranean legal personhood. From then on, any human who wanted to help Mar Menor could represent it in court.

For those in the budding Rights of Nature movement, who recognize the planet and all its ecosystems as living beings with inalienable rights, the Mar Menor victory was a breakthrough. The first body of water in Europe granted legal personhood, the move caught the region up to similar legal successes elsewhere, such as with Colombia’s Atrato River in 2016 and New Zealand’s Whanganui River in 2017.

Protection for Mar Menor came after a series of mass die-offs ravaged the ecosystem. In 2016, excessive nutrient runoff triggered a massive algal bloom that turned parts of the lagoon a misty green and killed 85 percent of its marine vegetation. Then in 2019, and again in 2021, nutrient runoff stripped the lagoon of oxygen, suffocating thousands of fish and crustaceans, and littering its shores with creatures gasping for air.

Spurred by the crises, environmental activists, lawmakers, and local residents banded together. They collected around 640,000 signatures and, in 2022, successfully pushed a citizen initiative through the Spanish parliament’s upper chamber. Their efforts resulted in a new law granting Mar Menor and its surrounding basin rights in every sense of the word: the right to live and flourish; the right to be protected; and the right to recover. The law’s Article 6 was particularly groundbreaking. It stated that any person or relevant legal entity “is entitled to defend the ecosystem of the Mar Menor.”

“The right to recovery is no longer something that depends on a ministry wanting to do it, but it is a right of the Mar Menor,” says Teresa Vicente. A law professor at the nearby University of Murcia, Vicente earned the Goldman Environmental Award, often called the Green Nobel, for the key role she played in driving the initiative and writing the law that gives personhood to Mar Menor.

But three years on, Mar Menor is still waiting for humans to act on their promises. So I visited this famous coastal lagoon—the name of which translates to Minor Sea—and chatted with some of its protectors to find out what was happening on the ground.

Much change is underway on the food and agriculture front, to put it mildly. But it’s also summer, a time to step back, relax, and recharge. Toward that end, we at Civil Eats offer our annual summer book guide. These 23 new or forthcoming titles run the gamut, from big-picture examinations of food-system issues and food philosophies to histories, memoirs, and cookbooks. This year, we’ve included two illustrated titles, too: a graphic memoir about the American ginseng industry and an illustrated children’s book about the life of restaurateur Cecilia Chiang.

We’re always looking for books that propose solutions to challenges in the food system, and this year we’re recommending several, including a guidebook to saving the planet, a collection of life lessons from chef and restaurateur José Andrés, and a look at what we can learn from the lives of honeybees. Happy reading!

The sound of Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” and the stomping of boots on hardwood echoed against the neon-bathed walls of O’Donnell’s in Lockhart’s town square. This Pride of Caldwell County dance night was one of eight events that the organization hosted over the last week of June, and with the bar packed from end to end with line dancers, onlookers singing along, and laughter, there was no shortage of celebration in this small Texas town.

Nestled in the heart of Central Texas, Caldwell County is better known as the barbecue capital of the state. But over the past few years, it’s also become home to a growing and visible LGBTQ+ community, a transformation sparked, in part, by a conversation among friends in 2021.

That year, a group gathered in Lockhart Arts and Craft, a bar just around the corner from O’Donnell’s, and laid the foundation for what would become Pride of Caldwell County, a grassroots nonprofit organization committed to building LGBTQ+ community and visibility in the region.

“Even just a few years earlier, there was so much more hesitation about starting something like this,” said Haley Fort, one of Pride of Caldwell County’s board members. “Pride did not have the same presence back then and we didn’t have stickers showing safe spaces or anything.”

In June, the world’s largest psychedelics conference returned to Denver. Eight thousand participants gathered to hear 500 presenters over the course of a week.

Psychedelic Science, organized by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), brought together people from 50 countries. They discussed such diverse topics as decriminalization initiatives, therapeutic and commercial regulation, electronic music raves, artificial intelligence, racial and social justice, and the genocide in Gaza.

Psychedelic movements are at a crossroads, testing different and often competing strategies and ideas. The research field was dealt a major blow in 2024 when the United States Food and Drug Administration rejected an application for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, one of the marquee MAPS initiatives of the last 20 years. MAPS itself has undergone major changes since then, cutting one-third of its staff. Its for-profit pharmaceutical arm Lykos, meanwhile, cut about three-quarters of its staff.

Denver, which also hosted the biennial conference in 2023, is a fitting venue. For years it’s been at the forefront of psychedelics liberation, and possession of naturally-occurring substances is largely decriminalized there. As the conference kicked off, Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D) announced a blanket pardon for anyone with a state-level conviction for psilocybin possession. He urged local governments across the state to follow suit.

It started with a dream: The Old Dykes Home.

Envisioned during beach trips with friends nearly 30 years ago, this is how Pat McAulay first thought of the concept that would become Village Hearth, the first LGBTQ cohousing community in the nation for people 55 and over.

“Any older lesbian you speak to has this dream of living together or living in close proximity and taking care of one another,” McAulay said. “Because people from our generation… come out of the closet and then have to go back in, in old age. That was the biggest fear, the treatment you’d get in a nursing home or some sort of a facility. And so that's where the idea came from: You take care of your own, as long as you can.”

In 2015, McAulay and her wife Margaret Roesch began seriously developing plans for Village Hearth, a sprawling fifteen-acre property in Durham, North Carolina, where lush gardens and 28 accessible, pastel cottages are now home to more than three dozen older LGBTQ adults and allies, some of whom The Flytrap met during a recent visit. Gathered in Village Hearth’s common house for coffee and cake, residents shared their many reasons for choosing cohousing, the challenges of close quarters and cooperative self-governance, and the model that Village Hearth can provide to other queer and trans people who want to support each other through the aging process.

“This isn’t for everyone,” McAulay laughed. “You have to be able to really listen. It can’t just be, ‘I’ve got this great idea to fix this problem and I’m going to do it.’ You have to be able to listen to everyone’s input, and adjust—it’s the only way to live in cohousing and it’s best for creating community.”

Have you ever looked at the map in a video game and thought: wow, I wish this was just the entire game? Or maybe you’ve found yourself playing a board game and thought: there’s not enough pixels in this? You’re in luck.

In the late 1980s, advancements in procedural generation tech gave rise to the booming “simulation” genre, which is characterized by games that model complex, real-world situations and environments. Players are often tasked with both responding to changes the sim throws their way while simultaneously trying to shape the sim to achieve their own specific goals: whether economic, civic, interpersonal, or in the art of war.

Although this subgenre of strategy games had been established prior to the modern moniker, the “4X” name (short for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) is believed to have originated from the 1993 release of sci-fi sim Master of Orion, wherein the four “Xes” were used to describe its gameplay mechanics. This snappy little device also perfectly described the typical gameplay verbs within other games in the subgenre… and it stuck. And if seeing a giant billboard for Sid Meier’s Civilization VII while driving on the 405 S the other day isn’t proof enough: this style of game has clearly stood the test of time. Yet for all the popularity of the modern Civ games, it’s one forgotten title from 1999 that would most accurately depict the arc of human civilization throughout the 21st century.

[...] Civilization: Call to Power (1999) was undeniably a Civ game based on its gameplay and its isometric, cobbled aesthetics, but when it isn’t forgotten by Civ players entirely, it’s best remembered for its many unique eccentricities. Despite being developed by an entirely different team with no involvement from Sid Meier or greater MicroProse whatsoever, the core elements of the 4X style remain firmly intact: players would begin on a small part of the map and must explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate, all complete with its now legendary “Wonder” videos which played upon each unlock. A few standout features include the spy/stealth units in warfare, the slavery system (and subsequent “abolition” development), a rather pointed distaste for lawyers (hmm), and the very cool potential of building underwater or space-based cities in the later stages.

However, it’s this progression of the game’s timeline that makes some real deviations from the Civ formula. “You soon get the feeling that the game is rushing you through the early eras of the world – the ancient, classical and medieval – so that it can show you the crazy shit it has in store later on. ‘Who cares about bloody horses and spearmen and rickety chariots clip-clopping along dirt roads and uncharted lands?’ it seems to say. ‘You’ve seen all that crap before, haven’t you?’” writes Robert Zak at Rock Paper Shotgun.

Most Civilization games mark the completion of a campaign when the player reaches somewhere in the early 21st Century. This would be the “near future” for games released in the late 1990s, but Call to Power made the unique choice of making the end date the year 3000 instead. And the far future? It kinda sucks.

The Anti-Defamation League has been a ubiquitous presence in U.S. schools for 40 years, pushing curriculum, direct programming, and teacher training into K-12 schools and increasingly into universities, often over the objections of students, parents and educators.

Now, the three million-member National Education Association has finally said no.

On July 6, the NEA’s 7,000-member Representative Assembly voted to cut all ties with the ADL.

The body approved a measure that the NEA ​“will not use, endorse, or publicize materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics.” The reasoning: ​“Despite its reputation as a civil rights organization, the ADL is not the social justice educational partner it claims to be.”

Union members speaking on the floor rejected the ADL’s abuse of the term ​“antisemitism” to punish critics of Israel, its use of hyperinflated statistics on hate crimes to gin up fears about Jewish safety, and its characterization of calls for Palestinian rights as ​“hate speech.”

Reactionary centrists rarely imagine solutions to political problems that do not involve a policy move to the right, especially on social issues. Won an election? You’ll need to give ground to govern. Lost an election? You’ll need to give ground to win next time. That this is obviously unfalsifiable doesn’t bother them in the slightest.

One of the main problems with reactionary centrism can be put in this way: Politics is about both policy and values. To use immigration as an example, the number of visas to be issued would be a question of policy, but whether a pluralist society is a good thing would be a question of values. Reactionary centrists tend to focus exclusively on policy, and sometimes they reframe issues of values as actually being about policy. Changing the policy offer is virtually the only way they can imagine a party appealing to a larger number of voters.

But values matter—not just morally but practically. Voters judge governments, and decide which politicians to trust, based on values. A party’s policies matter in part for what they tell us about their values. Politicians supporting punitive restrictions on immigration are communicating that they believe immigration is bad for the country. If those measures include making language requirements and “good character” tests more stringent, they are also communicating that they believe diversity is a threat to social cohesion, and a homogeneous society is a better one. They might deny these implications. They might not even directly intend them. But the implications are clear nonetheless, and people vote on the basis of them.

Skeptics may claim, You’ll never win voters by telling them they’re racist. But some voters are, abjectly, racist—those who tried to burn refugees alive in the U.K., for instance, or who marched in Charlottesville in the United States chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” They are a minority, but a larger share of the electorate than is often imagined quietly supports them.

Our disagreement with fascism is, ultimately, one of values, and it is on that level that the rhetorical fight against fascism must be taken. Those to the left of the populist, nativist right must articulate a competing, values-based vision to give everyone else—and especially the complacent middle—a true alternative to reaction; they must offer a clear, compelling, and coherent story about what the sorts of lives we want people to be free to pursue, and what type of society we want to have to support those dreams. And part of this story will be about just how dangerous, how utterly society-destroying, the far right’s story is. What policy views people can be persuaded to support will follow this conversation, not the other way around.

Developing nations are challenging Big Tech’s decades-long hold on global data by demanding that their citizens’ information be stored locally. The move is driven by the realization that countries have been giving away their most valuable resource for tech giants to build a trillion-dollar market capitalization.

In April, Nigeria asked Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to set concrete deadlines for opening data centers in the country. Nigeria has been making this demand for about four years, but the companies have so far failed to fulfill their promises. Now, Nigeria has set up a working group with the companies to ensure that data is stored within its shores.

“We told them no more waivers — that we need a road map for when they are coming to Nigeria,” Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, director-general of Nigeria’s technology regulator, the National Information Technology Development Agency, told Rest of World.

Other developing countries, including India, South Africa, and Vietnam, have also implemented similar rules demanding that companies store data locally. India’s central bank requires payment companies to host financial data within the country, while Vietnam mandates that foreign telecommunications, e-commerce, and online payments providers establish local offices and keep user data within its shores for at least 24 months.