Notices by alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts (alxd@writing.exchange), page 3

@Collar there are a lot of podcasts, like @solarpunkpresents , @solarpunkcast and my own @SolarpunkPrompts ;)

Andrewism has a great YouTube channel!

My own essay https://alxd.org/solarpunk-lenses-and-foundations.html can be a good intro!

#climate protests aren't enough in getting the attention of the general public, because without a vision of an alternative, sustainable future people quickly move on.

#solarpunk 's function is to create imaginable tomorrows to which the climate protests can point to - and which are able to sustain people's attention.

It's not about painting a perfect utopia, but a path where our actions matter, to fight the defeatism.

#climateChange #climateProtests #activism #literature

Once again I'm pinged in the #mastodon dev thread about grouping notifications of the same type, which started back 6 years ago: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1483 .

There were several attempts at implementing it, all shot down by maintainers.

@Gargron , do you still stand by your comment from https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/11446#issuecomment-516297592 ?

Is there space for discussing and implementing notification grouping in this app?

#mastodonDev #notifications #ui #ux #UXDesign #fediverse #floss #software #softwareDev

"If something did go terribly wrong in human history – and given the current state of the world, it’s hard to deny something did – then perhaps it began to go wrong precisely when people started losing that freedom to imagine and enact other forms of social existence, to such a degree that some now feel this particular type of freedom hardly even existed, or was barely exercised, for the greater part of human history."

"The Dawn of Everything" by Graeber & Wengrow

#solarpunk #narratives

All in all it's a really good book supporting that "it has not always been this way", that we are not doomed to go towards a global dictatorship dystopia, but that in history we had multiple examples of people dismantling hierarchies and choosing to live in flatter, more democratic and/or anarchist communities. It's just that what we define as "history" today is not really interested in such "dark ages" with no clear leaders or kings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything

It's also a great example of why #solarpunk stories - and maybe also social games, like #ttrpg s and #LARP s are needed, to help us imagine different ways of structuring our societies and communities, to playfully explore them intellectually and emotionally. Only this will give us the distance and perspective to see what is really wrong with the systems we are in, but also - a little of the healthy respite without escapism.

We are exploring those realms for a reason.

@polezaivsani this is about a little more than just "art" - "The Dawn of Everything" describes a lot of communities living among the "playful" rituals, which would very intentionally flip the power dynamics around then every so often. So it wasn't only an act of imagination [which could be easier to us], but a lived experience of treating power and hierarchies much more playfully, ephemerally.

A few days ago an old question surfaced on the #solarpunk reddit:

"What makes the Solarpunk movement #punk ?"

Since I wrote a few essays trying to respond to this question, let me answer it in a series of toots:

Okay, but where is the -punk- in all that? It was supposed to be SolarPUNK, not a sunny everyone-get-along-now! Where’s throwing molotov cocktails at hypercorps, where are the mohawks and being the underdogs? What’s punk in starting a garden?

Finally deactivated my Twitter account - for the same reason as Facebook, before that. I could see it becoming more and more toxic and manipulative. I will miss the more commercial creatives sharing their work, but I don't want to help Elon boost his numbers.

From now on, I'm only on Mastodon.

@polezaivsani @bsmall2 that's exactly why I wouldn't write such a story [of the guy in Alaska].

I've been thinking about the problem with #solarpunk and #cyberpunk for some years now and I arrived at one important conclusion:

We don't need any more warnings.

They don't work.

We need prototypes of a way forward. They can be absurd, they can be a little naive, but we need to get a lot of them out to try imagining what to do instead of just getting paralyzed by the doomerism around.

I find https://www.okdoomer.io/youre-not-going-to-make-it/ to be a nice little essay for all those people who think they can just leave the society during a #climateApocalypse and live #offGrid nicely.

It states again and again: you're not going to make it on your own.

We either build resilience together, as a #solarpunk society and communities, or we won't make it.

Let's not romanticize off-grid, homesteading and bunkers.

One more good line:

"The best kind of prepping is emotional."

Not exactly #solarpunk , but it's interesting to see the modernity and the future of the #globalSouth in Rest Of (the) World's #photography contest: https://restofworld.org/2023/winners-2023-photography-contest/

If you haven't heard about the magazine, it has a big pro-big-tech bias, but does a really great job introducing people to the context of how differently #technology is used outside of the North!

Take it with a grain of salt, but feel free to explore the world you haven't seen before!

We would like to reach out to authors and ask them for a permission to use their work in such a way.

Are you aware of any #solarpunk stories which are already open, for example under #creativecommons licenses?

@sarenaulibarri @Pheebsdw knowing you're one of the best experts on Solarpunk anthologies in the world, is there anything you could recommend?

A sci-fi/fantasy convention in Poland wants to hold a #solarpunk edition this year, but there's a problem:

There are almost no Solarpunk stories published in Poland.

They would like to give the participants a PDF / booklet with a few introductory stories, whether translated or in English.

We already have 2:
Jerri Jerreat's "Rules for a Civilization"
T.X. Watson's "Boston Hearth Project"

Could you recommend any other short stories which can be a good intro?

#literature #scifi #story

#solarpunk #gamedesign idea:

Survival game where you learn to be a part of an ecosystem and slowly abandon your unsustainable "tech tree" replacing it with sustainable, local solutions.

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A lot of games are trying to replicate very expansionist core loops, be it Minecraft's, Factorio's and so on, which see the player as a force acting on the environment / ecosystem, not working together with it.

Why not change it?

#game #gameidea #degrowth

Happy to hear that a new #nokia G22 phone takes a page from #fairphone s handbook and introduces replaceable battery and parts: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/25/nokia-launches-diy-repairable-budget-android-phone

Its a step in a good direction :)

#sustainability #righttorepair #repair #smartphone