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?
Congratulations! Roleplay immersion is a great way to have a mental solarpunk vacation.
Check out the Solarpunk Book Club ☀ community on Discord - hang out with 105 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
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.
Show If This Goes On (Don't Panic): Science Fiction, Fantasy & Progressive Politics, Ep Solarpunk: Solarpunk Kids Are Free Range with Navarre Bartz - Apr 22, 2024
The good news for Zionist punks is they can do the right thing and stop being Zionists at any point, like that Jewish woman I saw at the encampment wearing a Kippah patterned like a slice of watermelon.
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! -
On their Patreon, the “Solarpunk Presents” hosts admitted they interviewed crypto-and-web3 bro Stephen Reid because listeners asked for him. The hosts should have known better. They should have ignored those requests, as probably those listeners/Patreon donors are invested in crypto and are trying to shoehorn it into the conversation. The hosts should have known crypto is unnecessary for a solarpunk present or future. Instead we could be talking about real solutions like mutual aid, free stores, and library economies. The hosts failed to do the right thing.
Barring that, they should have refunded the money of Patreon donors asking for this speaker, saying that ethically they cannot platform crypto. The hosts failed to do the right thing.
They should have challenged Stephen Reid when he made fallacious arguments in favor of crypto. The hosts failed to do the right thing. After recording, the hosts should have realized their conversation wasn’t substantive and valuable. They could have refrained from uploading it or edited out the unopposed statements in favor of crypto. The hosts failed to do the right thing.
At the least they should have interjected context about those arguments, adding counterpoints and why crypto may not be the only solution or not a solution at all to any of solarpunk’s goals. The hosts failed to do the right thing.
They should have added a prelude or epilogue to the episode talking about any reservations about crypto or how the general conversation did not represent their solarpunk values. The hosts failed to do the right thing.
I have no confidence they will do the right thing in the future.
In S5E3 they invite on a guest in favor of crypto. The hosts do nothing to counter his statements. Even if they had on that episode, it would have been a zero-sum game. They could invite more guests on who oppose crypto. That still would fail to undo the damage of introducing crypto as something that deserves debate, rather than consistent and clear condemnation.
“Debate me,” is the rallying cry of the alt-right. You absolutely should not debate them. Those ready to argue in bad faith of the indefensible know the power of muddling issues, of eroding moral clarity, and creating uncertainty when there should be none.
I expect solarpunk media to have enough clarity of vision that they present a future that is better than a zero-sum game. And I expect them to do better than being permissive toward crypto. I have lost faith in the ability of “Solarpunk Presents” to deliver bold and radical truth. I have canceled my Patreon support and unsubscribed from their podcast.
Editing the original post as follows, in response to their latest episode.
Update for episode 5.3: In a case of hyper hypocrisy, Solarpunk Presents 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.
None of you caught it, but apparently AI stole art to make this image. My intention was to hire and fairly pay an illustrator. I sourced Nell Fallcard through Art Station, searching for mermaids, filtering out AI art. She met those criteria. However, I do see that recently she has used AI. Her bio's did not mention AI art, and on her recent pieces I saw that she had used blender, photoshop, and I was less familiar with AI apps and did not spot those. Reddit users voiced concerns that the art was stolen by AI. I hired an independent artist to look the piece over. She determined it was likely AI. To see her analysis, follow this link.
Even given her explanation, I find it unlikely I would be detect similar AI thefts. I will have to be more careful in hiring illustrators in future. My graphic designer also used AI art to make a back cover. I caught that and had him redo it. The front cover was not obvious to me. There are few things less solarpunk that stealing work from artists. I will not be publishing my novel with AI art, which means the release date for Missing Mermaid will be postponed. If you know illustrators who would be excited to work on a solarpunk piece featuring mermaids, do tell.
Hope you enjoy Murder in the Tool Library. Wishing you greener futures.
I wish you the best with your own solarpunk writing. Be careful when hiring an illustrator. I've had some issues avoiding AI art.
Hope you enjoy Murder in the Tool Library. Wishing you greener futures.
<deleting accidental double post>
Thanks!
The market is horrible, but what I care more about is spreading solarpunk ideas in a fun way. 💚
Good eye.
Yes, in this city there is a fusion power plant. Whether fission power is worthwhile has been a lively debate. Fusion represents a more aspirational goal. In this story it is paired with DAC plants to remove carbon from the atmosphere, another aspirational technology that will be necessary in some form to reverse climate change.
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. You can order the ebook, internationally, on the indie site Smashwords after its release on May 24th. You can preorder the book on Amazon. 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, 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.” 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.
Boeing planes were also marketed as people friendly.
Every person will vary. I am more comfortable with 5-7 hours sleep.
If electricity was limited during certain periods – Where should we use it? To what would you prioritize it for during these periods? Read the story about an energy crisis and a village meeting discussing how the electricity in the village battery (the round building) should be prioritized. Ca...
Show LeVar Burton Reads, Ep "Quarropts Can't Dance" by Rodrigo Culagovski - Mar 4, 2024
Yes. It is called the Great Wall of Oakland. People dance on it too: Bandaloop.
And this is why we think it was his account. https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadRedditors/s/r87YrCBEaX
Here’s a direct link to the Way-Back Machine capture: https://web.archive.org/web/20230317110400/https://www.reddit.com/user/acebush1/
This is a projection in Oakland. You can find the original art here.
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, 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.
Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast. This page: Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer
World Weaver Press: Publishing fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction. We believe in great storytelling.
Wine-cave Dem Newsom also responsible for destroying California’s rooftop solar industry, through his crony-crowded CPUC.
Over a million at this point. Google Newsom donations from PG&E.
Great explanation. Thanks!
In short, US residents need to shut it down before Genocide Joe escalates us to World War III.
I projected this and so much more on (formerly) Twitter HQ in San Francisco. You can see then are sign that used to show the company name.
My first solarpunk novel releases today. You can discover Murder in the Tool Library at eBook retailers. For a paperback like I’m holding, you’ll have to wait until next week. (Barnes and Noble did me dirty.)
When we make the podcast, write the blogs, and tend our Patreon garden, most of the time, it feels like shouting into the void. We occasionally hear from one of our supporters on Patreon and sometimes get comments on our various social media accounts, but what we’d really like is for discussions
To boil it down to a single set of bullet points, a group of billionaire investors
secretly bought up enough low–cost agricultural land to build a city that will make them obscenely richer when they sell and lease the resulting residential and commercial properties
used their ownership of parcels of land badly needed by the county to try to leverage the county into granting them the necessary permits and zoning changes
attempted to get the country to cover some of the cost to build pipes to supply water to the city they will profit from building
obtained the rights to that water by buying it from farmers who’ve had the market for their crops crash
and then, despite riling up county officials and local voters with their actions, tried to sell their project as a wonderfully generous social and environmental endeavor.
Systems that profit off the death of children must be dismantled. Governments complicit in genocide are illegitimate.
Original Photo: Belal Khaled
Children of the Al-Ghalban family were killed while playing in front of their house Saturday in Hamad Town in Khan Yunis.
Systems that profit off the death of children must be dismantled. Governments complicit in genocide are illegitimate.
Photo: Belal Khaled Children of the Al-Ghalban family were killed while playing in front of their house Saturday in Hamad Town in Khan Yunis.