AEMarling 6d ago • 100%
I appreciate you being clear this isn’t solarpunk. It is contorting economics to try to make it humane.
AEMarling 6d ago • 100%
Please be clear in your post these are by the Lemonaut.
AEMarling 6d ago • 100%
dragon wings solar Generators 💚💚💚 I will point out that even here, people are not deploying those blimp wind turbines, which are supposed to be good for emergency power.
AEMarling 7d ago • 100%
We had a fun discussion last weekend. Feel free to join us anytime. This is an anthology, so you can jump in, read that week’s stories, and hop on the call. Here is a new link in case the last timed out. https://discord.gg/x25VrwFC
Every Sunday this Discord of solarpunks has discussions, which are often thoughtful and interesting. We are about to start a new book, [Solarpunk Creatures](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199768460-solarpunk-creatures?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=5eQCnG4xQm&rank=1). Now is the perfect time to join us.
AEMarling 1mo ago • 80%
Yes, solarpunk is political. And while capitalist would-be-lords try to buy out elections, it is important you oppose them by voting. Locally, vote for candidates who support solarpunk values such as public transit and green infrastructure.
If you, like me, have the misfortune of living in the USA with its death economy, we need to vote and register others to vote for a candidate who is part of that bad system: Kamala Harris. A corporate Dem is at best a bandage for the open wound of fascism. Harris is not a solution. But if you don’t vote for her, that wound is going to get even more rotten.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
Also, it has good examples of nonviolent bravery.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
As much as I love bioluminescence, it is too dim to do more than mark paths.
I take it LED’s have trouble producing a single wavelength?
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
Thanks! Feels like they recommend something closest to option two. https://darksky.org/resources/guides-and-how-tos/lighting-principles/
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
I do not have much faith in motion sensors differentiating between animals and humans. Also, if they only turn on when your close, that might not help with perceived danger.
I’m designing a solarpunk city for my next novel and am exploring my options for streetlights. On the one hand, light pollution harms wildlife and humans. It also uses energy. On the other, well-lit streets increase the perception of safety. This is not to say good lighting prevents crime. If anything, it facilitates it. Further, you would expect crime to be less in a solarpunk city that prioritizes mutual aid, minimizes wealth disparity, and fights toxic masculinity. However, we should not discount the feeling of danger from darkness. Personally, I’m male presenting, actively seek out dangerous situations, and have a high tolerance for horror movies. My first inclination is that streetlights should go. That said, once I got caught out at night in the woods. I was immediately terrified. And I had my phone light with me. In short, if a city is not lit, I suspect few people would venture out at night. 1- Mostly Dark- A city could remove all street lights. People would instead rely on personal lighting: head lamps and flashlights. This would be more efficient and less harmful. Curbs and other critical areas could be marked (not illuminated) by glow-in-the-dark paint or bioluminescent algae or plants. There would be some light from open windows. 2- Lightly Lit- Streetlights with caps that aim light downward, wavelengths skew into the redder side of the spectrum, and the minimum illumination required to see. Amber light is less harmful. Brighter lights create more shadows. An example of a city using this minimal approach is Canberra, as light pollution would jeopardize local observatories. 3- Cinderella Lighting - Bright streetlights switch off at a specific time, such as midnight. This would allow people to enjoy some nighttime hours, while leaving others to more natural darkness. This is the scenario I used in my previous solarpunk novels. Do let me know your preference and awesome ideas.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
I’ve heard Roman concrete can withstand and even be strengthened by salt water.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
I’m amazed the entire downtown was elevated. Do you know enough about that subject to have an opinion about elevating the Ferry Building in San Francisco? That has to be done for it to survive.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
Yeah. I constantly feel under qualified to write solarpunk fiction. But I do it because it needs to be done.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
I’m writing a story about San Francisco, where greedy fucks filled in the parts of the bay to sell more real estate. Now those areas are going to flood. Worse, toxic groundwater will rise there first and make it unlivable.
To buffer the rest of the city against floods and toxins, I will portray wetlands restoration. What I’m not sure about is how wide an area the wetlands has to be.
The solarpunk reason to engage with these sorts of swamp cities is that they contain lots of infrastructure and housing that you would hate to lose. Reusing existing buildings is more efficient than building new stuff from scratch, especially high rises.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
I only read the solarpunk specific posts, and it is very positive. (I get more negative news when I’m ready for it on Bluesky.)
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
Not very topical, but hilarious nonetheless.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
Well, it is a legit question for solarpunks whether or not they should engage in a dead-end system, so I wanted to talk about it.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 83%
If you can’t be bothered to spend half a day voting when it could save the lives of people in your community, you are too far gone to reason with. Or just a fascist shill.
You can burn down the system any day. Voting comes only once every few years.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 100%
It can be two things. One, a person can be viscerally repulsed from voting for soulless politicians like Harris. That is understandable, though I do my best to urge people to vote for her anyway.
Two, it could be a paid shill only pretending to care for Palestinian lives, trying to prevent anyone from voting who isn’t a Trump cultist.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 80%
And if you read the post or watch the video instead of trying to discourage people from voting, you will see I have considered this and speak to it.
AEMarling 2mo ago • 57%
If you read more than the post title or watch the video, you will see that I talk about this critical issue.
A projection in Oakland that reads “liberation requires community.” What ways have you found to build community?
In a post-scarcity solarpunk future, I could imagine some reasonable uses, but that’s not the world we’re living in yet. AI art has already poisoned the creative environment. I commissioned an artist for my latest solarpunk novel, and they used AI without telling me. I had to scrap that illustration. Then the next person I tried to hire claimed they could do the work without AI but in fact they could not. All that is to say, fuck generative AI and fuck capitalism!
www.solarpunkconference.com
After writing Solarpunk Creatures, I decided to join forces with my co-authors to create a workshop at the Solarpunk Conference: Decentering Humans in Solarpunk. How would you create a society that sees other creatures not as things to be exploited or marginalized into extinction but valuable independent of their use to us?
discord.gg
We’re about to begin Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. Set in the year 2454, the Earth of the Terra Ignota quartet has seen several centuries of near-total peace and prosperity.
Projected last night at the Free Palestine Encampment at Cal, Berkeley. Colonial capitalism drives the war machine that bulldozes people from Gaza, to the Congo, to the Philippines. It’s important for solarpunks to show up in solidarity with native peoples against imperialism. Sustainability depends on the knowledge and stewardship of native populations. And, most importantly, Zionist punks fuck off! -
I’m swimming-with-mermaids delighted to reveal the cover of my next solarpunk mystery novel, Missing Mermaid. Right now I’m deciding how best to arrange the text on the cover. Do you recommend option one (author name on her tail) or option two (author name and title both up in the sky)? The illustration is by [Nell Fallcard](https://www.artstation.com/nellfallcard). You can order the ebook, internationally, on the[ indie site Smashwords a](https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1555972)fter its release on May 24th. You can preorder th[e book on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2LS4HVM). The paperback will come later on Barnes and Noble. 
Listening to a recent episode of the Solarpunk Presents podcast reminded me the importance of consistently calling out cryptocurrency as a wasteful scam. The podcast hosts fail to do that, and because bad actors will continue to try to push crypto, we must condemn it with equal persistence. Solarpunks must be skeptical of anyone saying it’s important to buy something, like a Tesla, or buy in, with cryptocurrency. Capitalists want nothing more than to co-opt radical movements, neutralizing them, to sell products. People shilling crypto will tell you it decentralizes power. [So that’s a lie](https://youtu.be/imZu4sY0kr0?si=ejIywdD20HNbdaIR&t=894), but solarpunks who believe it may be fooled into investing in this Ponzi scheme that burns more energy than some countries. Crypto will centralize power in billionaires, increasing their wealth and decreasing their accountability. That’s why Space Karen Elon Musk pushes crypto. The freer the market, the faster it devolves to monopoly. Rather than decentralizing anything, crypto would steer us toward a Bladerunner dystopia with its all-powerful Tyrell corporation. Promoting crypto on a solarpunk podcast would be unforgivable. That’s not quite what happens on [S5E1 “Let’s Talk Tech](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/solarpunk-presents/id1665735949?i=1000651074959).” The hosts seem to understand crypto has no part in a solarpunk future or its prefigurative present. But they don’t come out and say that, adopting a tone of impartiality. At best, I would call this disingenuous. And it reeks of the both-sides-ism that corporate media used to paralyze climate action discourse for decades. Crypto is not “appropriate tech,” and discussing it without any clarity is inappropriate. *Update for episode 5.3*: In a case of hyper hypocrisy, they caution against accepting superficial solutions---things that appear utopian but really reinforce inequality and accelerate the climate crisis---while doing exactly that by talking up cryptocurrency.
This is a projection in Oakland. You can find [the original art here](https://www.instagram.com/adhityazul?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==). The way-back machine found a March 2023 Reddit post by Aaron Bushnell where he said, “I’ve realized that a lot of the difference between me and my less radical friends is that they are less capable of imagining a better world than I am. I follow YouTubers like Andrewism that fill my head with concrete images of free, post-scarcity communities, and it makes me so much more prepared to reject things about the current world, because I’ve imagined how things could be and that helps me see how extremely bullshit things are right now.” If you care to see the full quote, you can check @tinythunders on Twitter or Andrewism’s [YouTube Channel](https://youtube.com/@Andrewism?si=aZDxW1ghF3LThZPz), the community tab.
I am working on the sequel to Murder in the Tool Library, a solarpunk mystery novel I published recently. In the next book, the clues lead to the Yucatan, and I would love to improve my representation of native people from that region. If you identify in any way as Maya (Yucatec, Mopan, or Q'eqchi') please do message me.
In short, US residents need to shut it down before Genocide Joe escalates us to World War III.