Solarpunk Crow

Solarpunk sideblog. My name’s Ellis. They /them pronouns

[sleepless-cavia]

[carpycaramel]

"but going eco-friendly is so hard!" "oh but we can't dismatle oppressive systems!" "but going more sustainable is so expensive!" "oh but capitalism can't be taken down or slowed!" OH SHUT UPPPPP AND LISTEN I KNOW WHERE TO START AND IT'S VERY SIMPLE AND MOST SAVES YOU MONEY ON THE LONG RUN.

I bought a stainless steel waterbottle for 16 euros, haven't bought any plastic water bottles since.

I repair my clothes that I already own and if I want new ones I thrift or go to clothing swap events or buy it off vinted.

I sell the stuff I don't want anymore on vinted, not throw it away.

You don't need to buy cutlery for traveling, just wrap the one you have at home in a napkin.

Take the bus, the train, any public transport instead of driving.

Buy metal straws once and carry them around.

Buy clothes made of natural materials, even if it costs more, it'll be good for even longer. Then repair.

Reuse jars to carry around for coffee (you can actually give that to the barista and they'll make it in it for you instead of a plastic cup. Or at least goes like this where I live).

Organize!!!! Join a community or a movement if you can if they align mostly with your values. If not this, organize your own community. Start with something that benefits everyone, and take accessibility to mind.

Research where you eat. If the place is a branch of a big corporation, choose a local place.

Avoid eating meat or at least reduce your meat intake.

I think this is obvious on my blog, but don't use AI. None of it. Turn it off where you can.

Go to your public library!!!! Even more chances to find community and get informed. (Sincerely, a library science student.)

Rewear outfits!!! Thought this was basic knowledge but dude the amount of people I see crashing out over wearing the same outfit is concerning.

Go to protests (stay safe out there)

Stay informed and inform your friends. YOU can make change, and if they see you make change, they will too.

Use your tech until they can't be used anymore, don't buy new ones for the fun of it.

Eco bricks!

Start owning your media.

Make more useful or personal gifts, make them yourself!!

Finish what you already have, don't restock unless you run out.

Start now, figure the rest out later.

[destiel-news-channel]

a message to the 'silent majority'

there's this thing people often say, when you bring up an incident motivated by bigotry, they say 'yeah, but that's just a small group of people that's exceptionally loud. most people don't actually believe that.' what they mean is that nobody (well maybe some people) is gonna make a really big racket just to say 'hey, im normal about this group of people'. most people do not actually support the hateful things the exceptionally loud group of people does. they might have biases but they won't go on a rant about how a certain group of people should be killed and if you asked them they would condemn the hatecrimes committed.

And the thing is, I get why the silent majority is silent. I know how difficult it is to speak up. When you feel like you don't know enough. When you feel like you can't change anything anyway. When friends or family are the people you would have to speak up against. When you know you'll get hate for speaking up. When you know people will assume things about you that aren't true because you speak up. When people connect your speaking up about one thing with also picking a side in an at most only tangentially related conflict. When speaking up means arguing against people who actually claim to support the same cause as you.

It also took me a long time to find the nerve to speak up. Even though I was disgusted and horrified by the things people said immediately. Because the people weren't just random strangers, they were people I thought of as friends. Because I had seen the way people who spoke up about the antisemitism got relentlessly harassed. Because I was afraid of people's reactions. I was afraid of losing friends or getting hate or saying something wrong.

Sadly while in some conflicts staying silent is a way to stay neutral, in the case of a group of people spreading hate and bigotry silence is complicity. Not intentional, but unintentionally. Yes, there may be the silent majority who doesn't support the actions of that small, loud group of people spewing hate, but if the silent majority doesn't speak up, they just give this group more power. If people can go somewhere and spread conspiracy theories and hate speech and prejudices unchecked. When no one stands up and corrects them. Then their numbers will grow, because there will be people who believe them, there will be people who get radicalised, cause no one ever tried to combat the conspiracies and misinformation and prejudices. If no one gets up and protects people who are getting attacked and harassed, then the attackers will just get bolder, they will be able to claim they have the support of the masses. And one day it will be too late. Because then staying silent means condemning your neighbours to death. And speaking up just means you'll die side by side with them.

So this is my plea to everyone who has been afraid to speak up these last few years: I'm pretty sure you are aware of the rise of antisemitism in these past few years. If not then I urge you to inform yourself. There are people both on the left and right who get bolder everyday. The spread misinformation and conspiracies, they harass Jews just for existing. Especially leftists claim to do this under the guise of helping palestine and are fast to denounce anyone who points out their antisemitism as a 'genocide supporter'. I understand how difficult it is to speak up against those people. The suffering in Gaza is horrifying and I wish I could just end it. And knowing I can't feels awful, being helpless feels awful. If then people come to accuse you of not caring or being evil or being everything you don't want to be, that hurts. It hurts so damn bad. And that is exactly the intention of those people. They are trying to emotionally manipulate you. They are trying to isolate you by marking you as an 'enemy'.

This is bullshit. If people are willing to turn on you because you try to raise awareness about antisemitism they unwittingly shared, then those people are not your friends. I know it's terrible to hear, but it's not you who is 'destroying the friendship'. If you politely point out someone elses mistake and they react with hate, then that is not your fault. Speaking out against antisemitism does not at all say anything about anyone's stance on the war. These are completely separate things. The suffering of the Palestinians does not justify antisemitism and people spreading antisemitism in the name of Palestine are not helping in any way. It is totally okay if you don't want to speak out about the conflict because you don't feel informed enough. It is indeed in my mind much better than sharing misinformation or reducing the conflict to a black-and-white, good-vs-evil type of thing. You are not obligated to speak up and form an opinion. Donating to an organisation that brings aid into Gaza helps much more than posting slogans on social media. Voting for people who actually have both Palestinians and Israelis best interests in mind helps more. Supporting the Israelis protesting against their current government, maybe even coordinating peaceful protests with them helps more.

What doesn't help Palestinians at all is antisemitism. It only hurts. It just leads to more suffering. There have already been Jews killed in the name of Palestine. Jews all over the world get harassed just for existing. The murder, rape and kidnapping of Jews by Hamas gets called 'justified resistance'. Jewish children get attacked, Holocause memorials get vandalised, Synagogues get firebombed. It doesn't matter in whose name and from whom these attacks come. They are wrong. And we need to speak up. Because more and more people get radicalised into thinking murdering random Jews is justified. And if you even just start by maybe looking at your own biases and prejudices, by maybe listening to actual Jews (I am not one btw so don't just listen to me) and informing yourself you will already make an enormous difference. And if you then reblog posts informing about the terrifying rise in antisemitism then maybe you'll motivate more people to speak up. And then you can help prevent even more people falling into Jewhate. Then you can protect Jews and fight against bigotry. Because it doesn't make a difference if Nazis are going around robbing and murdering Jews, demolishing their businesses and setting their synagogues on fire, or if leftists do it in the name of Palestine. It's still a pogrom. And you can decide whether you want to be like the German civilians who looked on as the flames of the burning synagogues were reflected in the shards of the broken shop windows while their neighbours were deported or whether you would be one of the very few people who helped protect Jews.

[destiel-news-channel]

i wrote this in the middle of the night while painfully aware i should sleep, so i guess it's a bit (or a lot) incoherent but i still think it's important.

i have gotten quite a few new followers recently due to the post about the phantom worm breaking containment and kinda expected a lot of them to immediately unfollow me as soon as they realised i regularly post about antisemitism - something that me and lots of other people have experienced in the past. i was thus positively surprised that as of yet that does not seem to have happened. with this post i wanted to explain to new followers why i speak up so vehemently and ask them to maybe also share posts about antisemitism and inform themselves so that the situation doesn't got worse than it already is.

i once said im not above begging people to listen to Jews and and speak up when someone says something antisemitic, no matter whether intentional or not. that hasn't changed. my pride is infinitely less worth than the lives that can be saved by stopping this rise of Jewhatred.

so this is me begging on my knees to everyone who sees this to take a moment to inform yourself about the thing Jews have to deal with, about the harassment and hate and violence and isolation they face everyday. to read up about antisemitism, especially leftist antisemitism, about what Zionism actually means, about ways to advocate for Palestine while simultaneously staunchly standing against antisemitism.

there are a lot of people hurting and killing Jews out there in the name of 'activism'. these people are no better than nazis. because it doesn't matter what your motive for a hate crime is, it is still a hate crime.

so please, please, please, think twice when someone calls for the death of all Zionists, or for the destruction of Israel or spams 'free palestine' or other slogans in the posts of Jews talking about their culture. twink twice and then SPEAK UP.

by staying silent you're just allowing more people to be radicalised into rampant Jewhate.

[destiel-news-channel]

[Image ID: A cropped screenshot of two anon messades. The first says 'Hope you get beheaded and raped shiltib'. The second one says 'If it was ww2 i would have 100% led jews straight to their deaths'. /End ID]

LOOK AT THIS

please just take a moment to realise HOW FUCKING BAD IT HAS GOTTEN. this is dangerous, can you see how dangerous this it? if you don't speak up about antisemitism when you encounter it then this will just get worse, and those people will eventually make actions follow their words.

[expressions-of-nature]

by rolig_basseng

[an-ruraiocht]

actually I think if you tell (non-climate-denying) people who complain about the heat that it's just gonna get worse forever now that you ARE being an arsehole and that's not helpful at all. cos they fucking know. we fucking know. what does that help. if you want to redirect conversations about extreme weather into climate action have you considered something like "god I know right? that's why I'm doing XYZ* to see if I can improve things locally so it doesn't get worse, want to join me?"

*local action, campaigning, planting trees, targeted politician lobbying, whatever: something CONCRETE and achievable with measurable results

otherwise all you're doing is making powerless and despairing people feel more powerless and despairing and that isn't helping shit

[thesophistiicate]

if you want to experience life more deeply you have to find more beauty. stop training yourself to dismiss, to mock, to assume the worst all the time — when you do this you build walls between yourself and the world. and after a while you stop feeling the warmth of it entirely.

beauty requires openness. it asks you to let things reach you, to soften enough to be moved. it’s not naive to see beauty everywhere—it’s a skill, a form of intelligence, a kind of quiet bravery. because it is so much easier to critique than to create, to detach than to engage, to dismiss than to love.

let yourself be affected. let yourself find things beautiful and let that be enough. life is not asking you to be cool, sitting on the sidelines and nitpicking everything. it’s asking you to see life and experience it fully.

[junestrings]

a lot of people dont care about insect biomass collapse bc when they hear we are losing 2.5% of the insect biomass per year they just imagine the cockroach and housefly population decreasing by that much. they dont realize those are among the only ones that will remain unbothered

[junestrings]

you can make a little oasis right where you are, and it matters

[headspace-hotel]

every year of restoring native plants I see a great increase in the insect populations, and loads of new insects i never saw before (all of them harmless--the insects that are harmful or parasitic on humans are the main ones being unaffected by the decrease in insect populations)

(a large part of) the problem is Plant Sameness. we must restore plant diversity

[unidentifiablelifeform]

[by-any-other-name]

I love thrifting I love ebay I love second-third-fourth hand clothes I love garage sales I love diy-ing and crafting I love giving clothes new life I love outfit repeating I love visible mending I love wearing/repairing the same item til its threads I love patches I love customization I love local libraries I love physical media I love burning cds for my friends I love shopping small!!

[herpsandbirds]

[kirathedumbass]

Scenic America | Protecting America's Scenic Beauty and Fighting Visual Blight

Scenic America is the only national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated solely to preserving and enhancing the visual character of Am

In case anyone wants some more info on this

[twinkhole-destroyer]

I need to press his bruises like it’s his gspot

[twinkhole-destroyer]

I’m gonna think about killing myself

[happybunnykat]

[politishaun-deactivated20230409]

They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants

“It was a slave camp. I can’t believe the court sent me there.”

Across the country, judges increasingly are sending defendants to rehab instead of prison or jail. These diversion courts have become the bedrock of criminal justice reform, aiming to transform lives and ease overcrowded prisons.

But in the rush to spare people from prison, some judges are steering defendants into rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

The programs promise freedom from addiction. Instead, they’ve turned thousands of men and women into indentured servants.

The beneficiaries of these programs span the country, from Fortune 500 companies to factories and local businesses. The defendants work at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Oklahoma, a construction firm in Alabama, a nursing home in North Carolina.

There’s little drug rehabilitation going on at these labor camps. Some of the companies that utilize the slave labor are so dependent on it that they’d go under without it. Some of the industries these men are forced to work in are notoriously dangerous. When they’re injured, the companies file workers compensation claims – and keep the money for themselves, even though the workers are typically not employees but clients.

[nostalgebraist]

Warning: no matter how bad you think this story is going to be, it’s worse

[harpyhormones]

dangerously close to a realization

[spiroandthelacktones]

My older brother went to a rehab that basically was just a work camp they had them out in the central California summer heat doing landscaping work for no pay six days a week, under threat of being sent to prison, they are literal slave camps and for profit rehab will NEVER work and will always be disgustingly exploitive of some of societies most vulnerable people

[thiefree]

regular reminder that slavery is illegal in america except when found guilty of a crime. any crime.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

there's literally nothing more radical in 2026 than believing that humanity can become good news for each other and the only world we'll ever share.

[liminalbeauty]

Saving the tags.

[antcomrade]

“Leave the Leaves” editorial illustration I neglected to post

[what-even-is-thiss]

You know, rivers catching on fire used to be a regular occurrence.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Boring, even. Mundane. People just accepted that rivers had oil slicks floating on them that could be lit by somebody throwing their cigarette in the wrong place. Cities had regular protocols in place on what to do when the river caught on fire.

[what-even-is-thiss]

The modern environmentalism movement wasn’t just started by hippies you know. Regular people cared about this stuff because their rivers caught on fire and existing near farms gave them cancer and by the 1970s they weren’t even seeing that much economic benefit from it.

[what-even-is-thiss]

If you don’t live in a world where rivers regularly catch on fire it’s because of stuff like the clean water and air acts. A lot of rivers in the US that in the first half of the 20th century regularly caught on fire are now safe to swim and fish in.

A lot of environmental damage is reversible if we act. We’ve got a lot of success stories like this actually. A lot of formerly endangered species have come back, fish have returned to American rivers, the ozone layer is being restored.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen next with the environment but I hold out at least a little bit of hope. Because rivers used to catch on fire and now for the most part they don’t.

[hillbillybubbeleh]

I was out working in the garden today and I realized while I was out there just how far my work in promoting biodiversity in the yard and creating a pollinator lawn has come along. When I first started being the caretaker of this patch of land some years back, it was an unfortunate "manicured monoculture" (basically just a green sea of one kind of turfgrass). Not anymore. 🍀🌿🌾🌼

Throughout the year now, you'll find a vast array of plants. There is a mix of 🌾 native grasses 🌾, along with so many flowering natives, brushes, shrubs. The Shrubby St. John's Wort popped last year, and hopefully there should be more blooming this summer. Last year, there was also what I think is Wild Bergamot/Bee-Balm growing along one of the property boundaries; so, I'm looking forward to seeing if that comes back this year. There's Wild Ginger I never planted, along with other surprises that have come up in the forms of Strawberries, Dew Berries, Wild Garlic, and Wild Spinach. You'll find Virgin's Bower vines, Thistles, Toothworts, Asters, Fleabane, cute little Seedbox flowers, Wild Violets, Dandelions, Flags, and Goldenrods. There's even been a Mustard patch this year, though I didn't plant it (it must have been a gift from the birds). There are wildflowers growing alongside my ornamental flower gardens, swaths of sweet-smelling Clover peppered here and there (and there and here), Bluebells and Morning Glories basking in the sunshine.

And, most importantly, there are birds, frogs, bees, butterflies, dragonflies, lizards, squirrels, spiders — wildlife everywhere, everyday. We even have a resident groundhog duo. 🦋🐸🐞🐦🐌🦆🐛🦉🐝🦗

There are still a lot of things I want to do with this space to improve it (a micro farming project I'm working on starting in one section of the property next year, introducing more wildflowers and herbs to the space, introducing some flowering native trees, and bringing in Milkweeds and Coneflowers again, because those have done well here in previous years and the butterflies loved them), but I'm really proud of getting things to the point that they're at now! And seeing all of the local wildlife enjoy it so much (as well as having plants that can provide them with food and shelter) is the greatest reward for the love and hard work put into this.

[roycohn]

if you are a left-leaning person in a political debate/argument with someone (a normal person - not an avowed fascist but someone who is being polite and open to hearing you out), there are a few questions you need to get comfortable and reliable about asking yourself:

am i treating the other person like it's their first day in the real world and need to be taught what to think, or am i doing the basic decent thing and assuming they have put some amount of thought into their existing beliefs with which i must contend and out-reason?

am i advocating for something, or am i just trying to make this other person feel small or stupid?

in the process of this discussion, have i actually made the case that what i'm advocating for will improve the other person's life in a material way?

and if the answer to some or all of these is "no," what you are doing is venting, preaching, or otherwise not helping to make a persuasive case for your beliefs. as we get closer to the midterms in november, it's going to be important to convince and persuade people to support various issues, and the first thing to do is not enter into those conversations with the attitude that all americans are temporarily embarrassed socialists who just need to be lectured about their own moral turpitude until they agree with me. contrary to popular belief within a not-insignificant subset of the internet, persuasion is not capitulation, it's just politics. if people don't see you as someone who genuinely has their best interests at heart, they will eye you and everything you're espousing with suspicion at best and outright anger at worst. and hostility and grandstanding doesn't convince anyone who isn't already on your side! so once again, i really gotta urge people to try to be thoughtful about the language and rhetoric they use to communicate their platforms to others. use accessible language to advocate for policies in a way that meets folks where they're at and assumes their best intentions. most importantly, again, don't treat people like they're stupid - treat them like you're trying to help them. because ultimately, you are.

(i've made this point before and gotten called everything but a child of god for it, but all i can say is i helped raise over $30 million last year at work that went to unambiguously good programs and causes, so i do know what i'm talking about in terms of persuasive communication. i would like democrats to win a majority this election season, and i think we can do this if we behave like serious people. and if you're not american, i especially don't want to hear from you in the notes. this is a triage election, not a pie-in-the-sky one.)

[dontfuckmylifewtf]

My personal addition is to also not dismiss people's emotions. Political opinions are often formed through some kind of emotion, be it anger or fear and I think those should absolutely be acknowledge. If you can't connect with the other person emotionally, you're not going to convince them of anything.

[roycohn]

yeah this is an actually good addition, thank you. people often start going down a reactionary path after something genuinely bad happens to them, to someone they know, or in their geographic area, and dismissing the source of that fear or scoffing at it is not actually helpful! and frankly, a lot of red states and cities have much higher violent crime rates than liberal cities, so it's often hard to speak to people whose politics are couched in these fear-based ideologies as a direct result of their environments without sounding condescending as someone who genuinely does not fear riding the nyc subway or whatever. this is an area where, instead of talking about how policing is oppressive or violent crime is good, actually, you have an opportunity to find common ground and approach from a place of empathy and understanding while also eventually driving to the point that right-wing austerity policies actually drive crime up while a robust social safety net and better diversion options for young people (including community centers and other third spaces/activities) help prevent them. so much of most people's value systems are ultimately driven by the fear of harm coming to them or their loved ones, or by an injustice that they perceived to have been perpetrated against them, and when you start by denying that those things are real to them, there's literally no point in trying to continue the conversation, because they already see you as the worst kind of condescending, out of touch asshole who doesn't care about them or their safety at all. we all deserve to live in a high-trust culture and we all deserve to reap the benefits of the policies that will get us there, not just those of us who already live in northern virginia or maplewood new jersey or somerville massachusetts!!!