When I lived in London there was a murder of crows that lived near me. I fed them often, they brought me presents (shiny rubbish and cigarette butts they found on the floor to thank me.)
When I moved, I’m certain they understood I was leaving because I had all my stuff and gave them lots of food and compliments.
But, they chased down my friend who lived in the next burrough over. They had recognised that friend with me several times and followed them to their house when they couldn’t find me.
They adopted my friend and it was now my friend’s job to bring them snacks and receive the presents.
This was maybe 6-7 years ago.
I visited London last year. Went to see my friend. The crows all not only recognised me, they tracked me down. We got into my friend’s flat and not twenty minutes later there was chaos on the balcony.
We open the curtains, the entire fucking murder is there shouting because they wanted to see me.
How much longer until the utopic Solarpunk future where Capitalism is dead and we all live in ecologically sustainable high-tech forest cities? Asking for a friend.
Until we make those ecologically sustainable high-tech forest cities ourselves. It’s going to take a lot of us to do it though, so best to spread the word (and gather native tree seeds).
The only reason why we don’t live in a solarpunk world right now is because no one has bothered to make it yet.
We’ll have to make it ourselves, and we’ll have to help each other make it. That’s why it is solarpunk.
Some resources to consider creating or joining or doing:
Repair cafes - create or join your local repair cafe! Repair stuff, learn how to repair stuff, teach others how to repair stuff.
Map of Makerspaces - make some things! learn how to make some things! teach others how to make some things!
Community Garden Map (note that this is US-only, and not a complete list) - join a local community garden
Support your local farmers / local economy (US only link)
Support or create a local Food Not Bombs chapter
Support or create a local Food Not Lawns chapter
Grow food in 5 gallon buckets
Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity (as a bonus you can learn extremely practical skills)
Volunteer via 350.org to help the environment / the planet / the place we live and depend on
Excellent-and-still-growing wiki from reddit’s awesome r/zerowaste community - great resource to learn how to live more lightly on the earth
Spread the word about solarpunk, especially to engineering students. Show them projects like Open Source Ecology - Global Village Construction Set and Bridges for Prosperity
Learn how to Patch a Hole, Mend a Seam, and Fix a Hem
Learn how to repair a hole in the sole of a shoe
Learn some basics on passive solar design - clever use of the sun can create extremely energy efficient homes and buildings. You can use these principles to save on energy bills, even if you’re renting.
Free USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision - cut down on personal food waste! Learn how to safely preserve food. Very useful if you suddenly harvest / purchase for crazy cheap in season / dumpster dive a ton of perishable food.
Donate to One Acre Fund, which provides training and capital to farmers (making them more productive and pulling them out of poverty) in various east African countries
Donate to Bridges to Prosperity, which provides technical expertise, money, and volunteers, to help local people build and maintain their own footbridges in extremely isolated rural areas
joining r/solarpunk, and sharing links/ideas/art/music with the community. Also, upvoting stuff for greater visibility. There’s over 900 members!
Graft fruit-bearing branches onto ornamental trees in your area
Turn plastic waste into pretty much any plastic thing you need, in your garage, with machines built out of cheap and accessible parts
Make your own paper out of recycled paper or cardboard
Build a composter or a wormery
Harvest rainwater
Mod your toilet to flush gray water (used sink/shower water, or even that rainwater you’re harvesting)
Build a solar collector on the cheap
Build a wind turbine on the cheap
Build a hydroelectric water wheel on the cheap
Get internet access without going through cable companies using cheap, low-tech equipment
Make your own beer, cheese, soap, wine… really anything you can make rather than buy is a success!
And HELP YOUR NEIGHBORS! Don’t just build/grow/mod/repair your own stuff, help them do it too! Share it! Depend on each other! Work together and grow closer with your community!
So currently I answer to my full first name (which I usually introduce myself with) as well as two nicknames/diminutives plus my last name when people mistake it for a first name. There are two or three other nicknames I've also gone by in the past. I'm perfectly fine with this, or neutral at minimum-- I have a common name and have had to be flexible with how I'm distinguished for my whole life. I also don't feel a deep and fundamental connection of my name with my identity, though I think going by another name entirely would confuse me.
A number of friends have been appalled at me being called names I don't say are my name. Which is really weird to me, although I'd go to battle for anyone else who was getting either deadnamed or called something they didn't want. But this perspective seems surprisingly common!
How do you feel about being called something other than the name you introduce yourself with?
I think it's fun if people give me (non-derogatory) nicknames or shorten my name
I don't care if people call me something else and will answer to it
I'm mildly uncomfortable or annoyed but won't make an issue of it
I HATE being called something else and will always correct people
I LOVE nicknames and endearments. People don't generally give me new nicknames 🥲 but it might be because I introduce myself with a really short abbreviation of my full name.
However! it does piss me off if someone extrapolates my govt name from the nickname and calls me THAT.
one of my friends in a discord server was talking about how they were nervous about their first scheduled acupuncture appointment. another friend offered to do a tarot reading for them. sent this picture.
Whenever I've been waiting for something to download/print, I've been making colorwork charts for the witch runes in Puella Magi Madoka Magica (based on the modern rune graphics on the Wiki). Really just a brain exercise with pixels, but I tried to be as consistent as possible. Each chart is 35 stitches/pixels tall, generally 35 stitches/pixels wide with some exceptions. ／人◕‿‿◕人＼
mini friendship bracelet for my dolls, made with sewing thread (you could also use separated strands of embroidery floss). its a fun way to make personal accessories for the dolls. i got a cheap set of various colours of sewing thread that wouldve been poor quality to use for actual sewing, but that works just fine for this.
i also taught her how to make them herself, saves me some time.
I'm watching The X-Files for the first time and holy shit. Holy shit, guys. I was of course aware that Scully/Mulder are one of THE ships of all time, but nothing could have prepared me for the insane levels of shippable tension between these two. Scully is out here barging into Mulder's hotel room - which is a LOADED location - to drop her robe so he can reassure her that she hasn't been abducted by aliens, she's just a mosquito magnet. Then she's defending him from bureaucratic bullies one moment and saving his life at gunpoint the next. Meanwhile, Mulder has the most wet, pathetic puppy-dog eyes for her at ALL times, truly whipped, casually fixing her necklace while talking about how she appreciates the "journey" they go on, immediately after she calls him out for being territorial around another guy. He's losing his mind when she's in danger. He's casually dropping the most insane compliments I've ever heard. He's known her, like, a month.
I thought I was prepared for them. I'm on episode three. I'm being fucking humbled for my shipping hubris.
as a regular donor to Gaza Soup Kitchen I get their email updates, and they said today that while they've continued to be able to expand, donations are slowing down as Gaza gets less coverage. If you have a few dollars to spare, I encourage you to send them here to continue the amazing work that Hani and his team are doing.
there seems to be a fundamental disagreement between microwave oven manufacturers and the producers of microwave meals over whether the customer should know the wattage of their microwave or if such details should be abstracted away from them
the microwave rice demands 800 watts of power for 2 minutes, but all the microwave can offer me three settings: one low, one high, and one somewhere in the middle. I turn it to the one in the middle as I happen to know 800W is the average power of most microwaves. the light comes on and the bag of rice starts slowly turning, but rather than hearing the usual rumble of the microwave, I instead start hearing short snippets of conversation - words snatched from the ether. the lights flicker and a chill runs up my spine. the voices remind me of those "spirit boxes" ghost hunters use. I double check the setting on the microwave. "ah," I say, remembering that I had set it to medium,
