Solarpunk/Ecopunk/Attempting Utopia

Solarpunk stuff and things. Combined with my incredibly fraught relationship with the sun, sometimes. For flavor.

[obsob]

:3

[cringefen]

harbor seals! :)

[kalbi-duamm]

[barbwritesstuff]

I genuinely think interactive fiction is an underappreciated art form.

[barbwritesstuff]

Just to clarify. All this is interactive fiction:

IF is any storytelling wherein the storyteller has to change the narrative based on the choices of the person engaging with the story. I write both interactive and linear fiction, and while some stories are better linear, some are better interactive, and it's hard to make a story that is satisfying not just in one way, but in many.

[trappist-q]

original drawing of a bonsai treehouse, takanori aiba

[amaliazeichnerin]

Is Africa leading the solarpunk future?

Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa are building solutions that richer nations could learn from

Interesting blog post.

[fvckw4d]

Interesting that a criticism like "you are always trying to find a way to justify the value of disabled people through labor extraction because your worldview worships labor. this is a weakness of the communist as much as the capitalist" is met with "shut up bitch, get back in the kitchen, wash a plate."

[fvckw4d]

a lot of people will specfically insinuate that you are trying to get out of doing work, because you are a bad person. "Me when i don't want to do chores." Confronting how they will be treated if and when they cant do any chores is too terrifying to think about, so everyone who asks that question is just trying to justify their own laziness.

[catchymemes]

[foxehrobot]

this is what solarpunk means to me. You find a printer. You fix it. You ask someone to please take it off their account and then they do and let you know. Beautiful. 100/10, wish printers didn't have to be tied to accounts in the first place but this is nice.

[treeen]

[ID: A photo of a paper taped to a pole reading in all caps:

"Hello!

Did you leave a printer here this morning? (Monday, July 3)

I got it working and printed this.

But I can't use some of the features until you remove it from your HP account.

(Sad emoji)

Can you please take a moment to log in and remove the printer from your account.

hpsmart.com

Thank you and have a wonderful day!

(Sunglasses-wearing emoji)"

On the bottom of the paper, written with a blue sharpie is:

"Done! 7/6 enjoy :)"

End ID]

[catchymemes]

[foxehrobot]

this is what solarpunk means to me. You find a printer. You fix it. You ask someone to please take it off their account and then they do and let you know. Beautiful. 100/10, wish printers didn't have to be tied to accounts in the first place but this is nice.

[pannndora]

A good life for the 99% isn’t a pipe dream: it can be done. Here’s how

Our plan is radical – but by transforming how we live on a finite planet, nearly everyone gains, says Thomas Piketty and researchers from th

A habitable, equal and prosperous 21st century is materially possible. The carbon budget allows it and history offers precedents at comparable scales: universal suffrage, the universalisation of healthcare and education, the halving of working hours and the sharp compression of inequality over the 20th century. Technical impossibility is not what is standing in the way, but rather the absence of a shared vision of social progress, at once concrete and radical. What it will take instead is political choice, and the hard work of coalition-building behind it.

I was despairing last night but Raye was right - my joy comes in the morning! This is the future I want to live in. And it is possible.

[my-dailydreams]

[isuggestrevolution]

this is my suggestion

[socialmaya]

Occasionally forget people genuinely think capitalism is thousands of years old

[sylestial]

One time I was talking about Robin Hood with some coworkers and one guy was like “he was bad because the people he helped learned to expect handouts” and I wanted to be like… okay can you explain how that flawed capitalist propaganda applies to feudalism

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

reminder that capitalism was literally invented in the 16th century

[tayefeth]

That’s an exaggeration. What was invented in the 16th century was mercantilism. Capitalism really dates for the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the rise of industry and cash crops over artisans and merchants. Vulture capitalism, with the notion that companies have no duties other than generating profit, is even younger.

[antique-scarecrow]

Capitalism is only 200 years old and I have to say, they have not been an impressive 200 years

[downtroddendeity]

I think a lot of this comes from the fact that most people don’t know the formal definition of capitalism. We all know the word, we’ve all seen the jokes, but very few people bother to actually define it unless they’re talking about political theory and philosophy, so it’s easy to end up with the impression that Capitalism = Money Can Be Exchanged For Goods And Services.

Capitalism is the economic system where most of the means of production (i.e. everything people need to have to make the stuff that everyone wants) are owned by private individuals or corporations, who then hire people to provide the labor necessary to produce things, with the intent of selling the output at a profit. It’s the difference between “you’re a carpenter and you make a chair and you sell it” and “you’re Richard Q. Richington who owns a chair factory, and you pay people to sell the chairs you paid other people to make and then all the excess money goes back to you.” There have been Richard Q. Richingtons on and off throughout history, but that being the norm for every single industry is a pretty recent development.

[antiterfbutch]

An alarming amount of people seem to think capitalism = all trade, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

[socialmaya]

what’s the secret of life?

to keep inventing new ways of living, rather than holding on to the past. that no idea, tool, or concept will ever provide a complete image of the world. you must learn to adapt and be dynamic

[faeberries]

two hour study - Náømí Ápájøk Lueth wearing Tamara Ralph

[directactionforhope]

Honestly a small but very significant part of the reason that we ended up here is because, over the course of the last hundred years or so, humanity has amassed a huge amount of research and knowledge on how to most effectively convince a person of something (cognitively, psychologically, neurophysiologically, etc.)

And then 90% of scientists, researchers, government officials, reporters, etc. who had a conscience all decided that it would be super unethical to act on pretty much any of that research, we have to convince people on the merit of the ideas alone--

And as a result, the only people who actually implemented most of that research on how to effectively change someone's mind were people who didn't care about ethics

...yeah. we gotta get on that. (WITH ETHICS)

[directactionforhope]

Anyway this is why they say "the medium is the message"*

*Translation (very rough): "the medium you use to convey a message always profoundly shapes the message itself." From the book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan, 1964. Free pdf via MIT here if you want to read more, it's super cool foundational Media Studies theory

And this is why making political memes can also be activism if you do it right lol

[lastoneout]

I do actually wonder if part of the reason people start believing ancient aliens type conspiracy bullshit is because they're so divorced from labor they don't understand that a bunch of guys could absolutely quarry a large rock, move it somewhere, and build something with it because that's not actually all that hard or complicated. I've seen people use a simple chisel and hammer to crack boulders the size of houses clean in half, this stuff is a skill that needs to be learned ofc, but the idea that it was impossible for humans to build large, complex, sturdy structures with relatively "primative" tools is so silly I struggle to understand how someone could believe that unless they legit have no idea how labor works.

It's the same beef I have with Fallout. I know they excuse humans being so slow to redevelop society with all "knowledge being lost in the war" but that's just...not how things work. Humans figured out construction and farming very early. There's no way for humans to truly forget how to do this stuff, especially since people survived and could preserve and share what they know. But I just cannot fathom how in 300 years no one's figured out construction or fiber arts or soap making or anything humans have historically figured out super early in the process of being human.

And the only way I can see someone write a world like that is if they either didn't care (fine, it's not real and I get digging the apocalypse vibe) or were so divorced from the process of labor and creation that they actually think those things are way too hard for someone to figure out on their own.

If you think humans couldn't do these things without being taught or helped you have a very warped idea of technological progress and human ingenuity. No one taught humans how to build and create, we figured it out on our own, and it was not just smacking rocks together until something clicked either, ancient humans were just as intelligent as modern ones, they could use logic and reasoning to figure out how to do something new based on what they already know.

Idk it's a theory anyway, but I really do think it's interesting how as a kid I def could believe doing these things is impossible for ancient humans to being an adult who knows things and literally cannot even comprehend believing any of the incredible things ancient humans can do were "impossible" in any way. It wasn't. Humans are incredible, stop underestimating us. And crack open some wiki pages or even youtube tutorials so you get a grasp of how the world works, it's good for you.

[towerologia-sideblog]

Archeology educator Milo Rossi in his Ancient Aliens debunked video (link under the cut)

[lastoneout]

You'll never guess what video inspired this post lmao

[homunculus-argument]

You ever think about how old people have no idea what “survivor bias” is, and take full credit for being excellent out of things where they lucked out?

“Back in my day we didn’t have any of these childhood protective things, we were smart enough not to do stupid shit on our own!” Except your little neighbour, who got the funniest idea at the age of seven, and got his skull pierced when he slipped?

“Back in my day nobody got divorced, we stuck together and fixed our problems!” What about your cousin, who was slowly killed by her husband because she had nowhere to escape him?

“Back in my day nobody had ‘mental problems’, we didn’t whine, we just toughed it out and endured life!” Hey remember that guy you used to work with, who seemed really friendly and normal, and then suddenly hanged himself ‘for no reason’?

“Back in my day we didn’t have any of this ‘gay’ or ‘transgender’ thing.” You did, but your family cut all ties with her before you were born.

 You kinda start seeing it in everything they think, if you start looking for it.

[thegrimzuera]

“When we were kids nobody whined about car seats or bike helmets. We didn’t use them, and we all survived!”

Yeah, except for the ones who didn’t.