Solarpunk

Hope the day has been treating everyone well!

Over the past few months, I've written several articles that aim to define certain aspects of a fully sustainable world. After writing the last couple of articles, I wanted to really explore those concepts within a story. To really get a sense of how life might actually play out. Below I have a link to a story where I put together elements of an open travel society, a shared community, and food culture together:

[SOL001] - A Kitchen Story

I had fun writing the sections that I explored, and hope that reading through it was equally enjoyable. Would love any feedback or opinions that you may have. What did you think of the narrative? Could you envision yourself in that world? Would you buy a solarpunk cookbook filled with short stories?

Hope the rest of the day goes well and thanks for reading! :)

Got these old ice cream tubs from a local ice cream place. $1 for a dozen. I wanted to increase my rainwater storage (currently have 2 rainbarrels). Realized I could stack these guys up as much as I needed. A few drilled holes and a spout off a cracked kombucha kit and bam. Homemade rainbarrel.

This is part of a set of daisey-chained barrels so I had to keep it to 3 tubs for height reasons. All told it only adds about 8 more gallons of storage but every bit helps. You could stack as many as you wanted though, within reason.

I kept it simple but you could also add additional sealing between the bottom-lid connection to limit loss that way. I will add a few extra pictures in the comments.

Complex, sustainable buildings can be grown from a single, flexible, knitted form filled with mycelium, the underground roots of fungi.

#Solarpunk PSA: Mastodon users can subscribe to a Lemmy solarpunk community by following @solarpunk

Scientists hoping to reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry have developed a way to grow building materials using knitted molds and the root network of fungi. Although researchers have experimented with similar composites before, the shape and growth constraints of the organic material have made it hard to develop diverse applications that fulfill its potential.

Learn everything you need to know about seed bombs, from the history, where to use them, how they work and how to make them.

With office usage hovering near 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels, cities are putting the underutilized space to new use growing food

[Google translate]

In the face of current systemic crises – climate crisis, housing crisis , rising food prices, health system crisis, depletion of natural resources, public transport failures, algorithmic capitalism, etc. — recourse to the market leads us to a dead end. But the welfare state does not seem able to manage the ambient disturbances either. Faced with this dilemma, how will we feed ourselves, house ourselves, take care of ourselves, move around?

We must explore new avenues and create new collective imaginations. Above all, we must support the effervescence of citizen initiatives and struggles that are multiplying in Quebec and around the world. How can we transform our institutions to recognize the right of communities to organize themselves to meet pressing social needs?

This magazine is full of utopian short stories, art and poems.

I was not familiar with this philosopher but this quote caught my attention

It is misguided to believe that pure arguments and calculated sacrifices alone will help us face our planetary challenges. In Weil’s view, we need transformative experiences that arise when we become attentive to the natural beauty and interconnection that lies outside of ourselves. Weil calls such revelatory forms of attention “praying”:

“At its highest stage attention is the same as prayer. It assumes faith and love. It is associated with a freedom other than that of choice, which occurs at the level of the will – grace. Being so attentive that one no longer has a choice.”

Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) could free us from the capitalist shackles of useless toil.

Perovskite is a class of compounds that shares same crystal structure as the calcium titanium oxide mineral. This highly flexible material is used in a variety of...

“AI powered tethered drones picking apples 🤯

These drones use AI image recognition models to determine ripeness and sugar levels in the apples.

Then they use a little arm to pick them.

AI & robotics will completely revolutionize the agriculture industry.”

Why less fantastical shades of our genre have greater power to inspire

Hickel makes the case for degrowth politics embracing focused technological innovation. To my mind this sort of tech-forward, eco-socialist political articulation is needed to achieve a solar punk future and stave off the worst effects of climate change. Curious others' thoughts!

It is a great video about culture wars and why they really matter a lot. I know it does not mention solarpunk at any point, but he shows clearer then most other ones I have seen, why a cultural shift brought by solarpunk fiction has to be the bases of a next world.

Solar panels could be about to get much better at capturing sunlight