Hi friends and comrades! What are you working on these days? I’m really interested in praxis and in new ideas of what to do in real life to advance towards a solarpunk future.
Hope you’re all well!
To answer my own question, I’m working on restoring/modifying two mountain bikes I recently got for free from a coworker. I’m hoping to turn one into a sweet daily commuter for me!
I’m also a Buddhist and host weekly zazen at my house every Sunday morning. I feel like Zen/Buddhism and solarpunk go hand-in-hand - seeing the reality of interdepence, we can’t keep killing the earth!
Finally, I’m also trying to get started composting again. I did really well last winter then got out of the habit when it got warmer (I have a thing about smells). I am hoping to get back into it now that it’s cooler and maybe I can pay less attention to the smells for a bit.
I’m also trying to get started composting again
This reminds me I need to call my city for a new bin! Last one got lost in a move, and then just forgot about it.
Love the biking and zazen!
I did really well last winter then got out of the habit when it got warmer (I have a thing about smells).
Can you describe your setup? A properly maintained compost bin doesn’t smell at all.
How to make one: take some fencing (you can get it for free from Craigslist) and make a bin a little over 1 meter tall and roughly 1 or 2m around, outside, on top of soil. Put dead dry plants or leaves inside on the bottom at least half a meter deep. That’s your sponge material to keep certain things from leaking into the soil. Now it’s ready to start taking inputs like toilet material, kitchen and yard scraps, dead animals, etc. Form a hole in the center with a pitchfork or other tool and put all inputs into that hole. Then put cover material on top of the freshly added material. Good cover materials are hay, straw or leaves, and they prevent smells. This cover material should also be present on the sides of the bin. Finally, get a compost thermometer and stick it in the middle of the material. The goal should be to get the temperature above 120F/49C. This will take a good amount of material and consistently adding it through the winter.
temperature above 120F/49C
This temperature target is really just to begin killing weed seeds - it takes a sustained temp above 140F/60C to begin killing pathogenic bacteria, with ~160F/71C being required to get to the most tenacious. If all that’s being composted is grass and garden waste and leaves and wood chips then by all means aim for 120F/49C but if the pile incorporates manures or carcasses then 160F/71C should be the target temperature.
Pathogen destruction is a function of time and temperature. Generally speaking, a compost bin at 140F/60C for an hour will kill most pathogens, or 130F/55C for a day, or 120F/49C for a week. And generally, compost bins will hold a peak temperature for between 24-72 hours before slowly dropping again, while adding fresh material will make the temperature rise again. Part of the reason time matters is because it isn’t just heat that kills pathogens - it’s also compost microorganisms that physically kill pathogens in the bin.
Getting compost very hot like 160F/71C like you say will kill pathogens quickly but it’s not only unnecessary, it’s also harmful, as a lower temperature will result in a more diverse culture of bacteria in the finished compost. Personally I aim for about 140F/60C.
And anyway, note that I said above 120F. It sounded like the GP was having issues with their compost that made me think that 120F would be a reasonable target to shoot for given their current situation.
These are very good points, and I hope you understand that my comment was coming from a place of care for a novice composter in the same vein as yours. My experience teaching new composters has caused me to give the 140-160F targets as that’s the most likely way for their pile to reach the minimum temperatures for these processes to play out.
I wish I had a photo of my setup but I apparently never did that, how odd! Anyway, it’s a series of pallets tied together with zip ties to make bins. I keep a seal-able five gallon bucket with lid in the kitchen, and we toss any organic scraps in there. We don’t have much yard yet so there are few grass clippings, but we have added some from neighbors before. Plus woodchips, leaves, etc. The smell issue came from unloading the buckets weekly in the pile - I would gag from the smell, though it was pretty mild all things considered. The pile itself didn’t reek really, but the bucket did. I just need to clean it more but with my brain sometimes a tiny challenge becomes a Mighty Challenge and it’s easier just to stop.
Not solarpunk, per say, but defiantly community minded and aligned.
I’ve started cooking double/triple on some meals and stocking my community fridge. I’m limited by containers, but the containers from my pasta place are fantastic as reusables; plus I get to eat more fresh pasta.
Actively participating in FOSS software. I’ve been a project manager for years, so even though I can’t code, I’ve found some niches of work that can protect time of those who can code. Plus I’m starting to figure out coding through helping others troubleshoot.
Continuously hounding my burrough to improve pedestrianation and remove cars. I think I’ve cracked the code on targeting specific levels/areas of municipal government regarding outcomes I’m looking for. Big tip for everyone: invite your representative and a roads planner for coffee, then walk to a destination in the problem area. The planner gets to experience the user story first hand, and the representative can push the right levers.
I appreciate the tip. I’ve been getting involved with my local Cycling and Pedestrian board, and really want to get them to see things differently.
I feel like infrastructure is the real place to start for Solarpunk.
I also do a lot of FOSS. Recently I’ve been working with the open street maps API, which. has been awesome. I really want to make some automated metrics that let me say “doing XZY would be the most high impact change”.
Fixing ewaste computers and giving them away. Finding furniture on trash day, fixing it up (sanding, staining, urethaning) and giving it away. Helping my neighbor clean out his house and putting the stuff on our local Buy Nothing -type group so it doesn’t go to waste. He also was interested in turning his lawn into a garden and our landlord won’t let us change ours, so we teamed up with our neighbor - this year we built a (I think) nice-looking raised bed full of perennials for the bees, and planted a fruit tree. Next year we’re going to do the back yard and possibly add a water feature hopefully driven by a used solar panel. We’ll see.
Edit: I don’t know if making art counts as praxis but I’ve also been making solarpunk art: https://jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com/postcards-from-a-solarpunk-future/
I’m learning everything I can about how modern batteries work like lipos and lion and figuring out how to safely reuse my friend’s vape batteries in my kid’s toys. I’m having trouble being motivated to publish about it but I know that the info would be useful. Next up is wiring up this extra solar panel from a past project into a 6s custom charger (without starting a fire hopefully) for some off grid challenges.
If you can, instead of publishing, just keep a weekly or monthly “dear future self” log somewhere online. Once the basics are up, people can ask about the missing details, and it’s a lot easier to reply and fill in the gaps than it is to sit down an write up a comprehensive summary.
A solarpunk future will need more plants of all kinds. I’m building and testing a (solar-powered naturally) temporary immersion bioreactor (TIB) that is suitable for mass propagation of numerous different plant species.
TIB are especially suited for multiplication of woody species. I don’t think anyone would disagree that a massive tree planting effort will require efficient ways to produce saplings.
I’m building a solar-powered temporary immersion bioreactor
Hahaha this is definitely the most Solarpunk thing
I am active in a socialist organisation in the UK called “socialist appeal”. We are not so large as of now but that is to be expected as society still needs time to come to conclusions in large numbers. However, we have almost doubled in the last year which is great to see! Why am I doing this? A solarpunk future is impossible under capitalism so it is important to be actively partake in overthrowing it :)
You might be interested in this; I want to write a satrical piece titled “Roads, Utilities, and Libraries are Socialist and have no place in America!”
But actually the satire is against every ideology. Even the most socialist countries usually have the idea of “my bed”, “my house”, etc. There’s still some form of ownership, and market driven prices.
The real point of the satire is; saying “oh that’s a socialist idea” or “that is a capitalist idea” is stupid. Don’t call right to repair socialist, just (truethfully) say it has bi-partisan support. Making a big deal about ideology is not helping the adoption rate. Ideas should be accepted when they’re good ideas, not because they have a label. So don’t label them.
Even the most socialist countries usually have the idea of “my bed”, “my house”, etc. There’s still some form of ownership, and market driven prices>
You are mistaking “private property” and “personal property”. Socialism has nothing to do with personal property, such as your personal posessions that you actually use like your house, toothbrush, car whatever. Socialism wants to abolish private property, aka private ownership of the means of productions, like factories, schools, public transport and etc. As a CEO of a bus company might not necessarily even use it, it is used by the commons therefore it should be owned by the commons; your toothbrush is not used by the commons.
I don’t think any socialist is making a big deal about socialism just “because it’s socialism”, nor any ideology to be honest. People first look at what that ideology entails, and then make judgements about it. A lot of people nowadays are seeing the contradictions of capitalism and see no future under it and crave some kind of alternative, however no current neoliberal, nor social democrat movement is giving an answer to the contradictions people see. Socialism however directly answers and explains the contradictions through marxist class dynamics.
And I dont get your point about labels. Labels are useful abstractions to summarise schools of thought. It is easier to say “I am a socialist” than to say “I believe in…:” and then just repeat the entire volume of das kapital.
Sorry, it looks like I kicked up a fire and I didn’t mean to do that.
I’m a bit sad I didn’t hear anything about the satire article. I thought you would like the idea. 😕 For context, it’s motivated by threads like this
If you’re willing to talk about it, I’m still curious if you think the article a good idea.
I just see this Pokemon meme happening a lot in the polticial space. People cant say “that seems like a good idea” if the idea came from “the enemy ™”. It’s really sad when an idea isn’t adopted only because of that. Maybe the UK is better about it, but I see it happen every day in the US.
That’s all I wanted to get across.
Sorry if my original comment was unclear. Labels and ideologies are useful, and I didn’t intended to derail the original point over what owership means. I want ideas to be judged and accepted based on merit rather than what faction they came from.
I suppose yeah I understand what you mean. Especially in the US there is a lot of political tribalism and extreme polarisation, and honestly it has one of the most extreme cases of anticommunist propaganda where something as basic as free healthcare will be seen as “evil communism”. Regarding your article, go for it. Clearly you identified some kind of issue that needs addressing and that article you want to make is your reaction to it. What I am trying to say is that the fact that you even want to make the article is already its justification :)
Also slightly unrelated but this reminds me of “radical centrism” where you basically take any extreme idea that sounds good no matter what side its from, be it communism or nazism.
the fact that you even want to make the article is already its justification :)
Haha that’s a good point thanks. I’m glad this conversation ended on a good note.
reminds me of “radical centrism”
Interesting! I’ll have to look into that.
Small scale, but I just got a compost bin! My muicipality was selling them for pretty cheap, I’d recommend everyone check if your town has any similar programs
The local fablab managed to get public funding to help produce solar e-bikes from an open hardware project. I’ll help them with this effort’s automation, using only open hardware components of course.
Just staying alive mostly. Oh I saved a guitar that was going in the trash and resurrected it 😊
