PraxisPost August 2024

I've jumped head first into hydroponics this year, and the last few weeks and months went into perfecting my balcony.

For the minimal space I've got, I have a lot of plants.
For those, I tried to make mostly passive and simple setups, so no spray towers or stuff.

I can post a few pictures if someone is interested, and I'll probably create a new community too for that wonderful topic.

I barely need to use water, my plants are almost pest free outdoors, and they grow twice as fast and big compared to soil. Fits perfectly into this instance!

I've been trying to find clothing made in my overdeveloped country. Though the only textile we make here is wool, maybe linen, it's a way to support labour practices that are not sweatshops.

Still learning more names of species that live here. I'm starting to spot some trees quicker. ID'd all the trees around my apartment.

Edit: also found local farms to get a good chunk of produce from. Food miles don't matter as much as people believe, but strong rural economies do: less likely to turn into exurbs, and less of my money going to supermarket extortionists.

for myself, i have been an unproductive lump for weeks due to oppressive heat in my part of the world. and also laziness, and internalized pseudo-Protestant work ethic guilt, and other stuff. but i do have some plans. i live in the arid southwest of the USA (well, extreme western Colorado but it's effectively the arid southwest, climate-wise). i've got some potato plants that are growing which have largely been watered via a rain barrel i have set to collect water from our downspout in our backyard. i have three more such rain barrels which i plan to install.

my mother gave me a gift certificate to a local nursery, so we're going to plant native/xeric bushes and trees on the west side of our house which is currently essentially bare and exposed to late afternoon glaring, hot sun.

we're adding cellulose insulation to our attic in September, and once the heat has died down a bit we are going to finish covering out front yard in cardboard and mulch, hopefully in time to plant some winter cover crops. we also planted an apple tree last year that has survived the winter and the summer thus far.

lots to do, and little energy to do it with unfortunately. i'm feeling really depressed and shitty about climate stuff right now, which is why i made this post; i'm hoping i can get some secondhand positivity or enthusiasm to help me get going to actually do some of the projects i have in mind.

I’m outlining my next solarpunk novel. Wish me luck (and endurance).

Heat also had its toll here, but I experimented with some vertical plant containers (recycled ice cream ones) to grow some salad.

Worked out OK, but watering was a bit too finikey for it to be convenient, and I was too lazy to set up drip irrigation for it.

I think I'll dismantle it again and rather use the space for some hydroponics experiment or so.

I've got a few projects going - I'm writing a TTRPG campaign for the solarpunk game Fully Automated, which I'm hoping to test and eventually release libre and gratis through their official channels. All my work so far has been on setting, characters, plot points etc, so I think you could use most game systems for it, though I am hoping to build out any gameplay stuff next (statting out some characters in FA's system and building a minigame around soil and water testing). The campaign itself involves exploring a mostly abandoned former bedroom community, searching for illegally dumped industrial waste from sixty years before so it can be safely removed and used in the production of geopolymers.

I've made a couple grocery trips on the mountain bike I recently started setting up as a cargo bike.

I've been fixing up an ewaste MacBook to donate to a refugee resettlement group.

I've also been getting into bookbinding, which I'm now using to make physical copies of some of my favorite extremely self published ebooks, none of which ever got a hardcopy release, some of which never got released as anything but serialized fiction on a blog or paywalled patreon. I'm not sure how much making something from entirely new materials falls under solarpunk for me, but I really like the idea of making long-lasting versions of these books.

Here's one of the ones I just finished - I've found I really enjoy the process of physically making these books. It's very satisfying. Theyre stitched like hardcovers, so they'll hold together well, but glued into a printed canvas softcover (my local makerspace has a plotter printer and my SO figured out they can run a big roll of canvas through it).