Solarpunk

Not having outdoor lighting, seriously. I've been workibg on using less for years, trying to drill down between needs and wants.

We can't buy our way out of this using more resources, the only thing truly renewable is organic.

Less is more.

Hey hey 💫👋 I'm working on creating a one-stop spot for someone who wants to surf carbon neutrally or as near as possible. This means a green payment gateway, a source of entertainment, a place to find out how to make a living eco, and a place to socialize and date. I'm so proud of the business plan because it actually makes money and I have some nice meetings coming up. Just wish I had people to work with :)

I just helped my neighbor replace his front lawn with low-growing roman chamomile and lavender. I’m hoping to rig up a little solar powered water feature using secondhand parts soon.

I have getting ready to replace the holes in the solitary bee house I set up at my parents’ place:

I've been cutting 6" sticks from storm damaged tree limbs, and drilling the various-size holes (I've got a set of 8" metric drill bits that get the full-length they need (some folk just use cardboard tubes or reeds, but this works fine for me. It's important to replace the sticks every year after they emerge so we don’t propagate diseases or parasites in the solitary bees.

Once I find a couple 6"x1" oak boards (maybe when someone throws out a bed?) I’ll be able to cut the arching back pieces for a wood and cast iron park bench I'm trying to fix up. I need to take a wire wheel to the rusty metal parts, then paint it and fabricate the wooden parts of the back (I already have the slats for the seat but they do need to be sanded, stained, urethaned, and attached). Then I can put it out near our local bike path.

Need to put a new tire and tube on my front bike wheel.

One of my hobbies is fixing up ewaste laptops and giving them to an organization in my city that rehomes refugees. I actually do ewaste in general, mostly through our local Buy Nothing groups, (everything from HDMI adapters to space heaters) but the modern-ish laptops go to the charity. I was able to get three laptops ready to go recently, and I'll be looking for more to work on for folks in my community next.

The Lenovo and MacBook Air came from a friend at the recycling center - he's allowed to set computers aside for donation if he catches the people dropping them off and gets permission, otherwise they get sent away for secure destruction. He also gets me laptop chargers sometimes too, which saves a ton of money. The one in the middle I found in corporate ewaste (I got permission to dig through on occasion). Everything's been tested and wiped and updated as far as it'll go. This set was easy, they were all intact, so I didn't have to get any replacement parts.

I’m also working on a set of photobashes, styled like postcards from a solarpunk future, that I'm hoping will help push the visual aspect of solarpunk art more towards the rest of the movement. I want people to see solarpunk art and think, "why aren't we doing that?" or “could that work?” I think it should depict a more lived-in, human future and demonstrate possibilities, technologies, and alternative ways of doing things. I'm also trying to cover seasons, locations, and topics like industry that I haven't seen in other solarpunk art to sway people's first impressions from thinking it's an empty aesthetic. I try to advocate for values like reuse I think fit the movement but are underrepresented in the visual artwork.

Still setting up the new house - so far got the entirely solar powered lighting for my workbench in my office going, and parts of the solar watering system as well as the solar powered garage vent

Gonna repurpose the maze mini tanks from the old place to increase our total storage - setting up an interlinked system with floats so that the 2kl gutter fed tank will automatically keep the smaller ones topped up (which then feed the irrigatia and wicking beds).

Also planning out the solar powered lighting for the basement...busy busy busy...

One of my neighbors moved out and I've mostly been murdering the tiger lilies he planted in the common areas. (He said he liked them and the deer would keep them in check. The deer only ate them in the spring, and he 'liked' them because then his pitbulls could chase the deer. Fucker . Then one of the other neighbors' dogs chewed on the lilies and got sick, so ....)

Anyway, I've replacing them with a mix of like 20 local pollinator plants, chosen for a mix of both pollinators and seasons. Trying to figure out how I can get some rain barrels in to feed the new gardens without pissing off the HOA, and carrying on the eternal battle to let the HOA let us install solar (beyond the two panels we hid in the backyard, but we can't get any more in there).

Common area veggie garden has finally settled in, and the apple trees should be bearing fruit in another year. [The berry bushes we snuck in the woods are doing nicely, and the local animals love them!]

Well, there's a DIY electric car which needs both axles to be re-designed. They didn't pass driving tests in the field. Design is complete but welding cannot start before weather turns nicer.

Also, my house needs a battery shed on wheels - wheels to keep away construction bureaucrats, shed because it's uncomfortable to sleep under the same roof with a very considerable amount of lithium cells. I'd like to keep some distance from them so that if something goes wrong, it's would be just the cells. :) The bottom platform with wheels is complete, walls and roof and everything such - nope, not a trace, not even a good drawing. :)

I have been talking to a friend who lives in a mobile home near Albuquerque. He is thinking about installing a roof above the home to keep it a little cooler in the summer. To that end I am recommending he use decommissioned panels as the roof and connecting them through a transfer switch to a mini split ac. This has the advantage of using cheap panels from Santan solar (which cannot be grid tied) for free cooling during the hotest hours of the day, while retaining the ability to run the ac at night.

We just had a very similar topic here: https://slrpnk.net/post/9408197

But if you are especially interested in gardening: I am currently thinking about how to DIY a simple automated irrigation system for the tomatoes and pepper plants in my little greenhouse so that I can do a camping trip later this summer without them dying.