Solarpunk/Ecopunk/Attempting Utopia

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

[obsob]

:3

[samwisethewitch]

Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group

It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.

Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.

In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.

Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:

Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)

Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)

How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)

Gardening

Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)

Country/Rural Living:

Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it's like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)

"Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy" by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)

Sewing/Mending:

Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)

Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)

Sustainability/Land Stewardship

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs -- in this case, indigenous American beliefs -- can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)

Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)

Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"

Note: the "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use "crunchy" spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.

"The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline" by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)

Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it's a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)

These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!

[nickturse]

[todaysbat]

Image description: over an image of a grassy coastline and a blue sky with a few clouds is the words "There is enough if we share" in all caps.

[maisonmimosa]

[drinksaroundthefire]

YES PLEASE!!

[titsay]

[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