#maybe solarpunk

[its-kks-world]

Stroads are streets that are designed like roads and in doing so, fail at being good at either one. They are too sprawling and hostile to be good streets, and they are too busy and complicated to be good roads. Stroads are inefficient, unsafe, expensive, and ugly.

This video introduces the concept of Stroads, and talks about why you will (almost) never find these kind of places in the Netherlands: because here all roads need to have a single purpose as either a motorway, connector road, or end-destination street. The name "stroad" was invented by Strong Towns as a way to explain why road design in the US is fundamentally broken.

As a person who is fairly invested in the idea the USA needs to invest in public transit and designing cities/towns that aren’t hideous, this video gives a great view of what that could look like.

[moths-and-radio-talk]

I'm trying to convince my school to have compost bins more readily available. I'm hoping for one wherever there's a trash can, rather than one big bin for the whole school. Do you have any words of wisdom?

I have a similar experience to this, though it isn’t quite the same. My school recently revamped its recycling program (it was essentially nonexistent before) through the environmental club. Our desired setup was pretty similar to what you’re describing, where we put a bin near trash cans or even scattered throughout campus where there’s heavy foot traffic. This was all student-led, from the idea to the collection of the recycling once we got the okay. 

I’d recommend putting together some sort of budget and detail of the project: how much are the bins going to cost, who is going to do the collecting of the compost to ensure it doesn’t just wind up in the garbage, are there any local composting programs/companies that can take the compost or will it end up in a big compost pile on campus, how often the bins will be emptied, etc etc. Having a plan detailed out may make it more likely that you’ll get some sort of approval, even if your laid out plans need a bit of tweaking in the eyes of the school. 

Whether you’re at a high school or college might make a big difference too. If it’s high school, it might be a bit more difficult to convince a school board to okay this. However, I know at my college we have a student government board that we went through for funding, and they were all for approving the recycling program. Especially if you’re at a college, suggest hiring a student worker or two to handle the compost collection; this will not only make maintenance staff happy since they won’t be given another duty on top of the mountain of work they probably already have, but it opens up opportunities for some students to earn some money during the week. 

Since composting can be a smidge more messy than recycling, maybe first suggest placing the bins in dining areas alongside the trash cans. If it gets approved and student response is positive once the bins are implemented, consider expanding it from there. I know we sort of bit off more than we could chew at first, so starting small and eventually getting more bins could help you get your composting idea off the ground.

Hope this helps!

[its-kks-world]

@pinkmoos I agreed with you said 'i also like the idea of us leaving Las Vegas', before I even got to letting the land reclaim the area because I so genuinely despise living here that I thought it was a trait all Las Vegas citizens shared. 😅 *laughing emoji with a sweat drop*

I think letting the land reclaim the area is good too though.👍 *thumbs up*

[its-kks-world]

I was listening to 99% Invisible and this video podcast came on talking about biomimicry design. I think this is super cool and very #Solarpunk.

[its-kks-world]

Nuclear Energy Retrospective

 I’ve done a lot of research since this post and I’m even more confused about Nuclear energy than I was when I posted it. It’s obviously something that I don’t have a deep enough understanding of to really talk about.

I am convinced of science is criminally underfunded. There is just so many questions we don’t have answers to. 

A big part of Solarpunk is looking to science for solutions to problems and that makes it hard to speculate sometimes, because there isn’t enough information.

Anyway the point of this post is that my position on the subject is much more in the middle now.

[its-kks-world]

I ended up on this page through someone on my following page and I'm learning a little about mutual aid. And like it's really effecting me, so I thought I'd share this video here.

[moths-and-radio-talk]

Okay I haven’t had time or energy to make a serious post in a little while, and I still don’t, so here’s some small things that happened this past week that felt like wins:

my strawberry plants have been producing more! I got five strawberries from them today alone (which doesn’t seem like much, but I’ve been getting multiple berries almost daily and that’s even after some have been stolen by wildlife)

took some old pots from work that were going to be thrown out and donated them to a local nonprofit greenhouse who can use them (keeping stuff out of landfills and helping a cause I love cut costs seemed like a win)

used silicone bags instead of plastic in my lunch more often. I’ve also been working on packaging leftovers with more silicone stuff instead of plastic, or using reusable plastic containers

traded some old books I haven’t touched in years for a couple of used CDs (yes I still play CDs in my car. fite me.)

finally made the switch from bottled shampoo to a bar (all my shower products are now non-plastic, huzzah!)

Goals for the upcoming week:

clean some stuff out of my closet that I no longer use/need

fix a fan that’s needed repaired for a solid year now (pretty sure a screw is just loose, but I’m also not handy at all)

add another patch to my Cool Punk Jacket

clean up some stuff in my room and hopefully find more things to donate or trade (a music and movie store recently opened near me that does trades, so if I find anything trade-worthy I’ll take it there. I’m a sucker for pre-owned media tbh)

[its-kks-world]

So Nuclear power...

*I wrote this post while doing lots of reaserch into Nuclear Power for a speech in college and being in an Environmental Science class. I understand that there's a lot of things I don't know and I don't really support Nuclear Power because building the power plant at least here in Nevada would be messing up some nature and I think a place important to Natives, so my current opinions aren't the same*

It has a much worse reputation than it deserves and I feel as if Solarpunk should talk about it. To explain why I'm bringing it up, I just got out of my Enviornmental Science and we had a lecture on alternative energy. My professor talked about how he likes Nuclear energy. He said there have only been 3 accidents in world. One was a design failure (lesson learned it will never happen again), another was human error, and the I can't remember the reason, but it let out less radiation than an x-ray. He also said that France is run 77% on nuclear energy. He said America should use nuclear energy and the only reason we don't is because people are miseducated about the safety of nuclear energy. So I'm pretty convinced that nuclear energy can have a place in a Solarpunk society. What do you all think?