Solarpunk

Inspirational documentary with ideas about how to become a part of your local economy

For the 250th anniversery of America (honestly, vomit) the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Natural Areas and Preserves is reconstructing the maps and transcribing surveyor notes from the 1800s to create an interactive map of Ohio's presettlememt habitats.

I'll be sure to post an update once the map is out.

publication croisée depuis : https://jlai.lu/post/23348432

Je publie ici aussi comme j'ai vu que mon précédent post y a été relayé.

Update suite à mon test avec une parabole, j'envisage de construire un cuiseur solaire selon ce schéma. La parabole linéaire fait 50cm de large et 1m40. Pour les réflecteurs j'ai prévu de découper des miroirs de 50cmx5cm. La parabole n'est donc pas courbe mais composée de facettes de 50cm (je n'ai pas dessiné les renforts transversaux, ni les miroirs.

Je prévois de construire la structure en agglo de récup, avec quelques pièces en contre-plaqué d e5 et10mm. Pour les pièces complexes, je l'ai ai découpées à la découpeuse laser de mon fablab et je m'en servirai de gabarit pour les refaire dans un bois plus épais avec une affleureuse et une fraise de copiage.

Je vais probablement doubler la transversale en haut pour plus de rigidité.

Les parties supérieures avec les trous sont prévues pour suspendre une marmite et à terme une plaque de cuisson, mon objectif est de voir si je peux faire une plancha solaire.

More and more people are getting motivated to get involved with in person activism. Which is great! But when you go out there and look for orgs to join, you don't want to get recruited by a cult or an authoritarian group looking for cannon fodder.

The guys at Flow Battery Research Collective have been designing a Redox Flow Battery development kit that you can build yourself using a 3d printer and a few tools. It's a desktop size flow battery that you can use to either do your own research, e.g. on different electrolytes or just to replicate their experimental findings.

Redox Flow Batteries have the potential to become grid scale or home electric energy storage solutions that are way better for the environment than current lithium based batteries. They can often scale power and capacity independently and allow for repairs.

The FBRC project wants to spread the knowledge on RFBs and help kickstart a global community that develops sustainable energy storage technology in an ope source fashion.

Beware that the project is still in its infancy and sourcing the materials can be a bit of a challenge. Be sure to ask around in the forums for help!

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24783048

I put together a quick flyer for us to print out for tomorrow's Good Trouble Again protest. (Find events near you on the map at their website!)

It was made in Krita (Scribus probably would've been better, but I didn't have time to learn it), using graphics from old IWW pamphlets.

It recommends:

• Collective action and Unionizing with the IWW
• What a General Strike is
• Building community with a link to the Food Not Bombs website (probably the weakest section)
• A section on Solarpunk with text from the manifesto, along with a link to slrpnk.net!
• Ends with imploring readers to talk to the people around them at the protest and form connections.

The flyer is 2 pages designed to fit on a standard US Letter in landscape orientation to enable 2 flyers per page, and intended to be printed double-sided in long-edge mode.

You can create a PDF of the 2 pages for easier printing in Libreoffice Draw (go to Page > Page Properties > Enable Landscape Orientation, and reduce margins to 0.25")

Page 1 Double Flyer:

Page 2 Double Flyer:

If the double flyers aren't working out for you, I also have a single page version. (without the section imploring reader to talk to the people around them)

Page 1 Single Page:

https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/48eb821d-c3c7-481f-8cbb-029989fb18c8.png

Page 2 Single Page:

It’s been about 10 years since I first heard the word “solarpunk.” It came to me via Facebook feed, in the form of a link to Adam Flynn’s “Solarpunk: Notes Toward a Manifesto.” As a lapsed writer of SFF and one-time poli-sci major, this was a pretty irresistible title for me. So I clicked.

The piece still holds up (I’ve assigned it a couple times). It’s a brief and elegant medley of imagery, references, and sloganeering. It had stuff to say about pop culture, and politics, and the looming climate crisis. For me, the most exciting part was that it implied a science fiction that wasn’t ‘space manifest destiny’ (which I could tell wasn’t happening) or 'cyberpunk singularity’ (which I’d soured on living in the shadow of Silicon Valley) or ‘dystopia/apocalypse’ (which was oversaturated in the post-Hunger Games/Walking Dead media landscape of the teens). And that science fiction had a catchy name that seemed to open up bright vistas of previously clouded possibility.

I was living in the Bay Area at the time and realized that actually I kinda knew Adam. We had met a friend’s birthday escape room night in SF Japantown. So I sent him a message, and we got a beer and talked solarpunk, and pretty soon I started thinking about what I had to say on the topic.

The result was a longread-style essay on Medium titled “On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk." Now, a decade later, this is one of the pieces of writing I’m most known for. It’s been read tens of thousands of times, cited in at least a dozen graduate theses, and translated into several languages. Here at around the 10 year mark of my involvement in solarpunk, I want to look back on this piece, talk about how it’s held up, how solarpunk has evolved, and what might be next.

I’m racing-downhill excited to announce the release of my latest solarpunk novel, Neon Riders. You can discover the ebook on this indie site. It will be findable on other channels eventually.

The illustration is by Neville Dsouza.

China is on a mission, and it’s one that could change the face of its landscapes forever. The Gobi Desert, a vast and ever-expanding sandy expanse, has long posed a threat to the arable lands and communities on its periphery. But China has a plan—a colossal, audacious plan—to halt this relentless advance. Enter the Green Wall of China, a project as ambitious as it sounds. Similar to the Great Wall that once shielded the nation from invaders, this modern-day counterpart seeks to protect against a different kind of enemy: desertification. This living wall of trees stretches for thousands of kilometers, aiming to restore ecological balance and provide a green shield against the encroaching sands.

One of the key aspects of the Green Wall project is the involvement of local communities. By engaging farmers, herders, and residents in tree-planting efforts, the project fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility. This grassroots approach not only empowers communities but also provides economic benefits. The planting and maintenance of the Green Wall have created jobs, boosted local economies, and improved living standards. Moreover, the increased vegetation has enhanced agricultural productivity, providing a more stable food supply for the surrounding areas.

Dutch engineers are turning ordinary buildings into green, living ecosystems—literally. According to recent reports from the Netherlands, researchers have developed innovative “living bricks” that Support natural moss growth, transforming walls into vertical gardens that not only look stunning but help tackle urban Pollution and climate change.

These moss-covered bricks work like natural air filters. They absorb carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, actively purifying the surrounding air. And that’s not all—because moss retains moisture and thrives in humid environments, it also cools buildings by reducing heat absorption. That means these bricks can help cities stay cooler during increasingly frequent and severe heatwaves.

I am new at this, but I have been trying to create a wiki/encyclopedia that focuses on teaching about the common topics of Solarpunk, while also having a focus on how to DIY where possible.

If you want to help out, that would be awesome! If so, you don't need to ask permission, since you should be able to edit (I will *not *be offended if you edit) or add to it yourself.

All of the items in the "Coming Soon" list are pages I haven't gotten to yet, but some link to the topics "Discussion" section where I have been throwing random thoughts or reference links. If you can make sense of my madness and would like to tackle one of those pages, please feel free to.

https://diysolarpunk.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page

Professor Ada Palmer, a well-acclaimed historian of ideas, set the action of her science fiction series “Terra Ignota” several hundred years from now. The world she imagined presents vast societal and cultural changes, but the topic of climate change is treated much more implicitly. Within the context of professor’s books - and the now growing genre of climate fiction - let’s discuss why it’s so hard for us to imagine and describe the climate change of the XXI century.

So, when people ask me for one thing they can do to bring about a more positive future, I suggest they seek out stories of real change that are happening right now. I’m talking about local food projects, renewable energy projects and neighbourhoods coming together to create their own solutions.