I like that killing your lawn involves imbuing life back into it. I suppose lawns count as undead.
(Seriously though, nice work! Making me wish violets were native here… but I can’t complain because the groundcover in my garden is being overtaken with beautiful white clover)
I love this. We just use an old jam jar as our rice scoop (gives us about 4 dinner portions), but this is so much nicer looking! And I love that it can measure spaghetti too. That one is hard to get the right portion of.
Thank you so much for sharing this. What a lovely bit of news!
She is 6 months and has no idea that the 20 shiny wrapped boxes under the glow tree are predominantly gifts for her from family. I also don’t think she has the concept of a gift yet. Or holidays. Or time.
But she’s been squeaking a lot today so… moderately?
I couldn’t say it any better than this tbh. But it’s a very good question to ask!
A few months ago I picked up some free potatoes that were going to compost
I was buying some second hand furniture and they just had a box of new potatoes that were destined for compost because they were supermarket surplus. But, they had a sign saying to help yourself, they’re free, etc.
Obviously it’s great that they were going to be composted, but you know what’s better?
I took a bag home. I planted them in my garden, discarding any not-great ones for my compost. Only two plants worked out, but… today I pulled up a bunch of big ol potatoes that are going to be made into roasties this holiday season.
I’ve never successfully grown potatoes before, so finding success when I planted them super late and had to pull them up early (we had our first frost) feels really good. Especially because they are entirely free.
Anyways, wanted to share that as it’s the most solarpunk I’ve felt in some time!
Reputable trans housing charities in California (LA area)?
Hello cool folks. I have a trans friend in California who might be facing unhoused-ness, and I want to be able to give her resources to help her. I used to know about stuff like the trans couch network from tumblr, but that was ages ago, and I live in the UK now so I only know UK based housing charities.
So: what housing organisations or resources exist in California, specifically the LA area? If any? I feel so out of touch on this side of the pond. I’ll do a Google search as well, but I don’t really trust Google to vet organisations like actual trans folks can.
Alternatively, any advice I can pass along to her would help. I’m trans but I’ve been lucky enough to have secure housing so far, so I feel out of my depth.
Oh geez this. My parents never let me try out new things if they would be messy or might fail. I wanted a veggie garden, nope. Baking, too messy. Tons of craft things were vetoed for a very long time too. Thankfully as an adult I’ve rekindled these desires, and i have a garden I cultivate and a sourdough starter going (as examples). But I do mourn the learning I could have done as a kid.
I’m determined to let my kid do messy things. Right now the messiest thing she can do is spit up, but when she’s older she can have so much play doh and dirt time and baking time.
(Play doh only if she’s not eating it)
I appreciate the sentiment (it hasn’t gotten better per se yet, but we’ve gotten more used to the… nature of the screams) and also I wanted to apologise for being rather combative in explaining the context— which, yeah, was definitely missing in the original post. Gonna edit that now to make this post less rant, more informative.
Yep this. I’ve been given the advice to step away from my baby when she’s crying if I’m overwhelmed and she’s in a safe place. That’s advice from basically every medical professional I’ve encountered during pregnancy and post partum. Because it is so, so important to not let your nerves get fried in an attempt to be a perfect parent, because letting your nerves get fried will lead to shit you’ll regret down the line. Be that shouting or checking out mentally or way worse stuff.
Ear plugs =/= can’t hear. Loops specifically are designed to allow you to hear but not have hearing damage.
My baby is colicky AF and will scream while we’re in the process of making her a bottle. Or while we’re burping her. Or when we have to pull the bottle away to wipe spit up. Or while we’re in the process of soothing her but not soothed yet.
I’m pretty patient (with children, not judgy parents though) but I’m not perfect. I can parent better and be more present while not massively overwhelmed by a noise designed by evolution to be horrible and intolerable.
Protip, expectant parents: ear defenders. Loop earplugs. Whatever. Buy them NOW
My baby is 6 weeks old. I’ve been planning to buy some loop earplugs “soon”. Well she just discovered a kind of cry that reverberates in my amygdala, so “soon” was NOT SOON ENOUGH.
Sigh. I’m gonna buy loops once my partner is awake. Yknow, so I can ask what colour he wants his in…
Eta for context! Loops and ear defenders specifically don’t block all noise, they just reduce the decibels of loud sounds. So using them means you can be more physically present for a baby with colic (and probably other fun ailments that happen later) longer before you need to step away from your nerves being fried. This is especially life-saving for neurodivergent parents, obviously, but I’d bet most parents get stressed and tetchy during certain cries.
Tl;dr still always reply to your baby when they cry! And it’s okay to use tools that make the experience gentler on yourself.
I’m so sorry. I almost wanted to downvote this because I want to downvote the circumstance.
But heeeeeey that would sort childcare… woohoo…
The swaddle. My child has learned being awake is fun. Including at night. By the power invested in me by this swaddle blanket, she will learn the beauty of SLEEP.
I grew up such a people pleaser that this would have worked SO well on me. Stop leads to “why?” But my parent being upset, or god forbid dosappointed… those are some words of great power.
I swear my nearly 3 week old is starting to turn her head towards me, and occasionally even try to focus her eyes on me, when I speak to her up close.
She wasn’t even meant to be born for another 12 days! At least going by due dates. But honestly as much as I’ve researched adjusted age for preterm babies, I’m becoming convinced I can ignore all that. I can see her speeding towards the 2 month milestones (the first checkpoint, essentially). She’s not hit them yet, that would be crazy, but I’m seeing early signs like the above.
Also she read Watership Down.
Okay it was an abridged version for kids and I did the reading. But she liked the pictures.
Okay not strictly words, like at all, but the other day I had my baby in my lap and she randomly arched backwards, pursed her lips in an O, and after a dramatic pause let out a long “oooooooooooh”
I knew then I was sleep deprived because I lost my shit laughing.
Tl:dr; “ooooooooh”
Parenting in an uncertain future, solidarity? Feels?
So I gave birth to my first (likely only) child about 10 days ago. First off, I can’t comprehend how much I love her. But more to the point, I’m having such big emotions about her and the world I brought her into.
I’m big into climate activism and uh, in general doing my damnedest to ensure there is a world for her to grow up into.
So it’s so weird looking at her. Thinking about the kind of tasks she has ahead of her should she go down the activist path. Wondering what kind of struggles she’s gonna face thanks to my generation. And also, I’m aware she’s her own person and will become herself, not mini-me. But in light of all of that, whenever I look at her, I just feel so much hope. It’s so irrational, this child’s highest achievement so far is drinking 85ml of formula in one go. But I look at her and feel like we will be okay.
It’s a stark contrast from the typical doom n gloom around child-creation you find in activist circles. Stuff about overpopulation and dooming your progeny.
If your freshly born newborn doesn’t poop because she’s constipated, well they work surprisingly like toothpaste tubes if you hold their knees to their chest.
I’m sorry for the image. I’ve earned my “grit your teeth and do what you gotta” merit badge at just a week and a half postpartum, so I’m… happy?
I would love a general/weekly discussion post! Currently 8 months pregnant with my first, so I’ll take any chance to connect with other parents once she is here.
Beautiful! And I bet it’ll be even more beautiful in bloom!
Do you harvest from this patch and eat them? I’ve never had prickly pear, but everyone I know who has raves about it. Therefor, I am jealous 😄
I would just like to both validate and challenge your view of the UK. I lived in Torquay (Devon, so the southwest) for a good long while, albeit during the height of lockdowns, and community felt nonexistant. There were some punk-type-folks attempting to get stuff started right when I moved away, but only just then iirc.
I moved to Inverness (Scottish Highlands) and it’s night and day. There’s a queer community doing hella shit, there’s a tool library popping off, lots of good local initiatives are being organised and taking off.
My kneejerk response is to say that Inverness beats the hell outta Torquay. But the thing is, about 4-5 years ago NONE OF THE STUFF I mentioned was going on. The queer meetup was organised by one dude who moved up from London and was gobsmacked that there wasn’t an active community. Now it’s consistently a huge, weekly event. There are even offshoots of quieter meetups that had to be created because the main one is So Successful. But all the local queers will tell you that before this started, they thought they were all alone up here.
And the tool library is only about a year old, but keeping on well.
So on one hand, yeah, I think the UK has a very… independent culture. But once someone identifies a need in a community and fills that need, people tend to show up and appreciate it.
Also, i reckon this is a good time to be an organiser. People are tired of being alone during a pandemic, people are tired of seeing what other communities do via the internet and want their communities to do the same.
Tl;dr be the change! There’s an appetite for it.
What an awesome thing. Reminds me of the Trans Couch Network on tumblr back in the day, I always wondered if there was something else to take its place.
(I have the same concerns as I did then of the potential for abuse, like someone else said, but I don’t have any actionable advice/etc yet. But queer housing is a major Thing to me so I might do some research/thinking on the subject of abuse mitigation, if that’s welcome)
Discussion: what would you do in a post-work society?
Very much inspired by the recent post about what anti work actually means. If you were free from the “work or starve” paradigm, what would you do with your time? No wrong answers.
Personally, I would like to spend more time outside cultivating food and fiber. (Fiber here meaning growing flax for linen, raising angora rabbits or even goats or sheep for their fiber, etc. I am big into textiles)
This is a goal I pursue even now, because my current job is high paying and 4 days a week and I want to use that relative privilege to gain skills that help my communities. Speaking of, I’m also a big fan of community organising, which is another thing I’d want to keep doing post-work.
But like I said, no wrong answers! You don’t have to have a plan for how you’d serve your community. Some of us wouldn’t. And most of us don’t have the time to even think of what we could do for our communities. For that last case, I hope this discussion can be inspiring!
How do you have a baby The Solarpunk Way? AKA, without using Amazon?
Weird title, I know. But I've recently found out that I'm pregnant with my first child. It's an equal mix of anxiety, excitement, and anger at just how consumeristic having a goddamn baby is. So I'm curious how my fellow Solarpunks would handle the introduction of a new small mammal into their world.
My main concern revolves around Amazon and general gifting.
I live in the UK, but I'm from the US originally, and my family and most of my friends are back in the US. Their go-to for sending me anything is Amazon, because you can easily shop in the US and ship to my home in the UK. I've had mixed feelings about this for a long time, but now that my entire family is gonna want to Buy Something for Baby I'm especially cautious. I don't want to tell them not to buy anything (Well I do, but more on that later). But I absolutely do not want to receive anything from Amazon. Environmental, economical, political, and ethical concerns aside, I don't really trust items from Amazon to hold up lik
I turned a dress into a cowl sweater: A smol blogpost
(view this in gemini too! gemini://okasen.smol.pub/how-a-dress-becomes-a-sweater)
I just want to share this sweater DIY project I did last night in a furious anger at fast fashion. If anyone wants specific construction details, I can try to provide answers to questions! But in general, it was very slapdash and haphazard and I don't recommend anyone just jump straight into turning one piece of clothing into an entirely other piece. It takes a lot of practice and... battle-hardenedness... to not give up or be too perfectionist with this kinda stuff. So if you're already a sewist, give something like this a go! If you're not a sewist: become one!
A smolnet post I made on doomerism and dead cities
(NOTE: this is mainly hosted on the gemini protocol, a New to Me thing that I've really enjoyed. If you want to get into the small internet, check out https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
If you're already a geminaut(?) you can find this post here: gemini://okasen.smol.pub/dead-cities)
I wanted to share this post I wrote on my tiny blog because it inspired me while writing it, so I thought it might inspire others to read it. The summary is "All life is futile so live anyways"
Also, I wanted to share how nice the smol internet is. It's really refreshing to write a post and know that it'll only be seen if I choose to share it (like, here) or put it on a feed like Antenna. I don't need to worry about too-catchy titles or clickbait or dreaded SEO.
I barely even edited this, mostly because I wrote it in vim and that sounds like a nightmare. But I'd love to know y'all's thoughts.
(Also I wasn't sure if this REALLY fit into solarpunk as a broad community, but... well I'm putting it here a
I have joined the smolnet
This is my smol.pub blog! It's on gemini, gopher and the web. I'm super stoked about this tiny interent. Here's the gemini link:
gemini://okasen.smol.pub/about
I'm also really liking astrobotany. Gemini link to my garden:
gemini://astrobotany.mozz.us/public/8a025bdd014c443e8fa21282674fa99b/m1
Put these gemini links into wobbly if you don't have a gemini browser!
Behold, my gardening project. Currently very overgrown, but soon to be a permaculture oasis!
(See also: My awesome gardening coveralls, which I made myself to be as Loud as possible. Also, one of my dogs)
I've recently bought a house and there's a LOT of work to be done in the back garden to get things ready for my purposes. Little by little I'm clearing away dead stuff and overgrown bushes... and oh god so much of it has thorns. but I'll persevere.
(But if anyone has a brand or type of garden glove they like for dealing with thorny plants, I'm all ears.)
I'm also curious what you all would do with all of the garden waste this generates? I have a bin I can put garden waste in, but before I start binning the clippings and such, I want to be sure they can't be used. I have started a compost pile that desperately needs more browns, but with regards to the greens it's getting quite full!
Learn to break down whole chickens and build your respect for the whole animal while improving your meal planning!
so this is the other end of animal husbandry, but I feel it's important to know how to deal with an animal on the cutting board with skill and respect before you ever dispatch one. I'll try not to make this too long and rambly, but here's my thoughts on why you should try to learn how to properly break down whole birds.
First, respect. I find that seeing an animal in a form that still looks vaguely like an animal helps build that connection in your mind that yes, this was a living creature once. And I think that's important when we're still buying chickens from the grocery store-- obviously if you're raising your own chickens already, you're more intimately aware of that. I have a lot of issues with the meat industry, and one of those is how sanitised and detached the meat buying process is. It's a lot easier to ignore that the food you're buying was once alive when it's a plastic package of seven breasts from 3 and a half different animals.
Second, frugality. I'm not saying it's st
A simulation app for off grid systems
Found this on instagram from an account I follow (not religiously, so no guarantees on reliability). It's an app for designing your off grid homestead, and from the demos I saw on instagram it looks neat. Not too expensive to back at the lower tiers, all of which give you access to the app.
Obviously Kickstarter apps are 0% Guaranteed no matter what they say, but I thought this was worth sharing here.
can home-farmed meat be a part of solarpunk?
Hi, I escaped from r/solarpunk. Content Warning, this post is about raising animals for their meat, so may be upsetting to some. I'm putting this under farming because I couldn't identify a better community (maybe food?) but I'd be happy to move this topic into a new, specific community if that can be done.
Something that's been going in my mind for a bit is the role of backyard farming and homesteading in solarpunk. First caveat, I think vegetarianism/veganism for 99-100% of the diet of 99% of the population is a fantastic goal, but I think we need to have solutions for the interim where society is still coming around to the idea. Even people who want the best for the planet and animals might be intimidated by the prospect of veganism or even vegetarianism, whether or not they have sound reason for this.
While we're still reliant on animal meat, I think that moving our animal raising from big factory farms into local smallholdings or even our backyards would help immensely. On one h