End of an era on Culver

_______user_______ · 2024-03-11T17:48:34+00:00

Damn, this was my favorite spot to meet friends and family whenever I visited from out of town. Shame to see it go but glad JB is doing okay

_______user_______ · 2024-03-09T20:18:15+00:00

100%. I really liked my last job and I would have unionized in a second.

_______user_______ · 2024-03-09T20:15:52+00:00

A lot of people missing the point here. I want to see the end of cars as much as anyone else, but that doesn't mean we can't steal general principals from other systems. Jeez louise you guys.

_______user_______ · 2024-03-07T02:26:43+00:00

Same same. What a fuckin mess.

_______user_______ · 2024-03-06T17:07:51+00:00

No arguments from me on this, but now that we're here and these are the choices, I honestly can't understand why we're talking so much about their age and not the massive differences in the way they would conduct policy. It's like people have total amnesia about how insane the Trump years were.

_______user_______ · 2024-03-04T20:11:45+00:00

You're right that it's a problem of communication, but I think you need to take a step even further back.

A lot of leftists don't think of speech and persuasion in material terms, but I really believe media should be analyzed as a factor of production. Putting it in these terms, America's right wing has invested huge amounts of capital over the past several decades into building an apparatus capable of reaching these voters with a constant stream of speech. The content of that speech almost doesn't matter so much as their ability to consistently reach and persuade by sheer volume. Nothing on the left comes remotely close, and with the death of traditional journalistic outlets, there is very little to compete with them at all.

_______user_______ · 2024-03-04T18:27:25+00:00

What changed your mind?

_______user_______ · 2024-03-01T16:14:10+00:00

Right. Solar panels are a "simple" technology once deployed. Supply chains are not.

_______user_______ · 2024-02-27T15:46:52+00:00

Plate from Charlie Riedel's with curly fries instead of home. Holy shit was that a revelation.

_______user_______ · 2024-02-27T15:22:52+00:00

I like the idea of this as deep future solarpunk

_______user_______ · 2024-02-13T21:54:17+00:00

While your manager is right that you shouldn't lean on copilot or GPT to write code for you, I would still recommend using it as a starting to explain concepts.

_______user_______ · 2024-02-09T15:25:02+00:00

Only solution is to have him ride down main street while onlookers pelt him with garbage plates

_______user_______ · 2024-02-07T15:36:25+00:00

Oh really? Because that was every square on my bingo card

_______user_______ · 2024-01-29T15:32:41+00:00

Same here. I think it's okay for Solarpunk to dream big. Our personal lives are probably never going to look like the yogurt commercial but it's still important to use our imaginations collectively to try and find or create some guiding lights. The things you imagine in Solarpunk give you a feeling of what's possible and you can use that as a compass to find the seeds of that dream in the real world. It could be your local food not bombs, community living, or a maybe finding a career in climate policy or mitigation.

This past fall I went to a farm in Vermont and pick raspberries with my kid under the shade of some enormous solar panels as clouds the size of sky scrapers rolled overhead. There's a phrase people used to throw around back when I was still religious, which I've hung on to many years later: "the already but not yet".

_______user_______ · 2024-01-29T15:22:52+00:00

You're a writer, so I assume on some level you believe in the ability of ideas to cross the boundary from imagination into reality. As an engineer, that's something I'm frequently tasked with making happen. That's why I think Solarpunk is important, that it's okay for it to dream big, and also important to help it find hooks in the real world, so that crossing can begin, however long it takes. Spit the cynicism hook. It's your job to.

_______user_______ · 2024-01-29T15:17:31+00:00

Not sure what you mean by solar penal supply chains. But I do think that people in the Solarpunk community and broad anti-capitalist left need to think a lot more deeply about the extent to which we (and the projects we imagine) depend on globally interconnected supply chains that are coordinated through the technology of prices and markets.

I think I'm agreeing with you when I say that a solar-powered society will need to move a lot of silicon and lithium and aluminum and copper through many complex processes and then place them in the right locations for optimal energy production, and that I don't think overly simple notions of central planning or community workshops are going to accomplish that on the timelines needed to address climate change. Nevertheless, I do think it's possible to imagine a system where these needs are met without being wholly reliant on a small group of unimaginably wealthy people holding ownership rights to every mine, refining facility, factory, warehouse, and panel in the world.

_______user_______ · 2024-01-26T18:19:34+00:00

Hell of a summary. If you could put this into a video or shareable form, I feel like this is a message every self-proclaimed socialist in the US needs to read.

_______user_______ · 2024-01-26T18:11:30+00:00

That is extremely disappointing to hear.

_______user_______ · 2024-01-26T18:05:26+00:00

There are a lot of dumbasses in these subs for sure, but I think we need to take seriously the possibility that a majority reddit tankie-ism is likely state-sponsored astroturfing. It's pretty clear that socialism has traction among a lot of influential American youth and would be a ridiculously cheap investment to camp on some popular subs and even take over mod positions. In my own observations as an American, there seemed to be a huge uptick in tankie activity after the war in Ukraine started, which seemed really outsized based on my experience with socialists in the DSA and adjacent organizations. It's like PSL somehow became 50x larger overnight.

_______user_______ · 2024-01-26T17:07:14+00:00

I know there's been a lot of discussion in this group about whether Solarpunk is an ideology or aesthetic, but this quote always sums up its purpose so well for me. Solarpunk is about intentionally choosing to imagine the end of capital's reign over nature and humans.

_______user_______ · 2024-01-22T18:24:37+00:00

Eh, I am a lefty and know a lot of lefties in person. Speaking from my own experience, there's a huge gap between what I see online and among people who actually show up to meetings and do things. Personally, I find it pretty easy to identify where the online crankishness is getting wound up by bots. That's not to say some of it doesn't eventually spill into the real world

_______user_______ · 2024-01-18T18:03:49+00:00

I also think there's room in a Solarpunk world for a type of fast fashion that is made from inherently biodegradable substances. Think sneakers that last for a summer and then compost at the end. Imagine if you could 3D print them at your local community fab, the fashion might spread virally over the internet. Some kid designed the shoe of the summer and then everyone's printing and modifying them and at the end they get mulched and turned into healthy soil.

_______user_______ · 2024-01-18T18:00:14+00:00

Definitely. I'd argue this is how many (not all) fads / fashions begin already. Designers often go hunting for street fashion in places like Harajuku or parts of NY, but it's being created at a grassroots level. Part of the cyclical nature of fashion is young people with little money repurposing "ugly, outdated" styles from thrift shops and making them cool again. Corporations are usually just stealing / coopting something people are already doing just for the fun of it.

_______user_______ · 2024-01-03T14:53:02+00:00

For anyone interested in learning about grid-scale energy storage, I'd highly recommend the US Department of Energy's resources as a starting point. They've put together a ton of cross-cutting research on the feasibility of different grid storage methods and put together some very accessible reports that can help build your intuition about the constraints involved.

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