This is a great fit, thank you!

Thanks! I found them over on the subreddit and have started digging through their articles. Good to know about any bias.

Thanks! I’ll take a look and see what I can find

Thanks, I’ll try to find a copy (or just read the internet archive copy) - it sounds like it’s long enough and covers enough that there should be something on rural areas

I’ll take a look! I’m aiming to have more sections on library economics so it might tie into that too

Seconding !music@slrpnk.net but in general I’d associate folk and punk rock because of their protest roots.

I think Holmes exclusively cheated investor-class rich people

The important thing is that the orks trust it

That’s a huge improvement!

This is awesome news! Thanks for letting me know! I’ve been waiting to see these sails get real world use

The big display screens made for corporations are supposed to be high quality TV hardware minus the ‘smart’ features - if you can find a used one without burn-in. But I don’t know specifics for makes or brands, sorry. I get my TVs from ewaste so the goal there is mostly just to limp it along while ignoring whatever problem caused the original owner to throw it away.

There are some interesting oven designs that use rooftop solar collectors (mirrored troughs with a tube of transfer fluid running through them) connected to normal-ish form factors ovens downstairs. It’s basically the same setup for solar steam generators (if you run a business that uses a lot of steam). The only problem is it’s a direct use of the heat without much storage (from what I remember) so you can’t really start baking before sunup.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/04/23/aggressive-tiger-mosquitoes-are-spreading-through-europe-how-can-we-protect-ourselves

There are also some cool designs for direct solar that point a reflector dish into a hole in a wall (the inside of the hole is the inside of an oven in the kitchen). Tamara solar kitchen has one but there are lots of similar versions.

There’s a bunch of them!

I gathered up all the examples I could find awhile back:

https://jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com/2024/10/15/nautical-solarpunk-a-resource-for-solarpunk-writers-and-artists/

The IRL and proposed examples are about halfway down the page.

I’m honestly not against using Facebook to actually do some good if you already have an account - there’s something to be said for using the places people where people are already hanging out. But if you don’t have one, it’s definitely not worth making one.

Freecycle has local sites for different locations, there might be one for your community. And Buy Nothing has been trying to move off Facebook (to an app, unfortunately - I don’t like apps) so that might also be an option. Both host the right kind of community for this kind of project.

One other thing I’ve had some luck with is just putting up paper flyers. I try to look for the places where people already congregate or where lots of staples and thumbtacks indicate that other folks felt it was a good spot for flyers.

It’s also worth noting that while resellers can be annoying they can also fit a useful role in a network whose job is to keep stuff out of the landfill. When I’m giving away something nice through Buy Nothing I might prioritize people who also give stuff away, or at least seem to participate in good faith but there’s been times when I had acquired some niche ewaste normal people don’t need that I was happy to give it to a guy who would almost definitely sell it on ebay because that was the only likely way it’d find a home (and if it nets a retired guy in town $20 that seems okay).

At the Swap Shop where I sometimes help out, we can’t afford to be as choosey, but volunteers generally know who the resellers are and when they show up. We often put new or nice stuff out throughout the whole time we’re open rather than just upfront so other folks have a chance to get it, and often set things aside for specific people when we know they’re looking for something. We also have a limit on how many items people can take per week.

Generally it’s less of a problem than it probably sounds like. Some volunteers get annoyed by people taking tons of stuff, but I’ve seen the piles of stuff that still goes into the waste stream because we don’t have room for it.

In the end of the day I think it’s a bit of a headspace thing - the worry/anger that someone will game the system can make you miss the sheer amount of good it can do even with a few jerks in the mix.

This sounds rad, which protocol/meshnet system are you using?

I’ve got two-ish projects that might count: I’ve been reading up on Reticulum mesh networking, particularly with LoRa nodes. I like the idea of that kind of network, but have no idea what amount of activity I’ll find nearby despite living in a pretty big city. I’m still at the stage of figuring out what to get and how I’d like to use it.

I’m also looking at setting up a Gemini server (the gopher-based web alternative protocol thing, not google’s dumb LLM) but I’m a bit skittish about anything that puts a hole into my home network, especially a service made by such a small group because I don’t know what kind of security holes might have been missed (I’m certainly not likely to spot them). Ideally I could set it up through Reticulum, so it’d be air gapped from my regular network, and it appears that someone has made that work, but I think it’d only be accessible to other folks on Reticulum and I’m not sure if that’d be worth it at first. We’ll see!

My active project at the moment probably barely counts because I’m going full analog. I’ve got two antique Leich 901 crank telephones (like an actual crank, not a dial. Turning it generates AC and rings all the phones on the network).

I plan to use them to rig an intercom between the kitchen and workshop. This’ll involve some woodworking as I’m making a nice box for the talk battery for one, and a display board with a voltmeter and two plexiglass-covered cutouts for displaying the wiring and batteries for the workshop end.

I got them all wired up with some really ugly splices and was impressed - they can ring each other and the sound quality is quite good when talking, no repairs needed! Attaching them together is rock simple, just a few wires, plug and play. But my plan is to wire in some old rj11 phone jacks to the display board and battery box so they can (mis)use standard phone cables to talk to each other. In fact I’m hoping to use some of the old wiring already in place in my apartment.

Okay, that makes more sense, thanks

If they’re not generating enough to backfeed even at peak, and they can detect when the power cuts off and deactivate until it comes back, is there an actual safety/legal issue?

The poor C-suite at that utility company already needs to find ever-increasing profits on a basically stable business model and now consumers can just precipitate electricity out thin air? That’s moving things in the wrong direction! Thank goodness they basically own our local government and shareholder value can be maintained.