Thanks for working so hard to keep the community going! I really like this place

I think things are going to get a good deal worse in the next few years, but also that the old systems crumbling could make space for something better. But if we want better things to grow, people will need hope and roadmaps. They need to know that things could be done differently and those solutions have to feel reasonable. And I think that's where solarpunk media comes in.

I think fiction has an incredible ability to make these potential realities feel familiar and comfortable and attainable, to wear off all the rough edges and propaganda. Solarpunk settings can help people tour their options, and see what library economies, public transit-heavy cities, and robust systems of support and mutual aid look and feel like, how they might work (and problems that might arise and how they could be solved). So when someone starts trying to scare them about the dangers of socialism or anarchy they already know better because, in a way, they've been there.

When I work on solarpunk art, write solarpunk fiction, my research is mostly around rebuilding. What practices, technologies, infrastructures make sense for a society that's trying to rebuild better. My hope is that we can speak to this generation and the ones that follow it, provide big dreams and suggestions on techniques, and hope they'll recognize opportunities to improve things when they see them.

I don't have access to a marketplace like this but I do a lot with our local free groups. Between my household and helping some neighbors cleaning out their homes, and relocating a fair bit of corporate ewaste, we've given away thousands of items. We've also obtained quite a bit of stuff we would have otherwise had to buy.

We've definitely run into resellers a few times, especially with electronics and big-ticket items. With an online group I can vet them if I'm really worried about the fate of the item - sometimes for something really nice that a lot of people want, I'll check someone's profile and if it's nothing but them claiming expensive electronics, I might pass it to the person who gives at least some stuff away. But I also recognize that the folks who are asking for lots of stuff and aren't offering up much might just be in hard times and need groups like this the most. So I try to err on the side of giving stuff to whoever can take it.

Most of the time I just want the thing gone and as long as I'm not worried they'll throw it out themselves, if a reseller will take it and find a home for it, that's fine by me. For a handful of items, like special brackets for wireless access points, I deliberately gave them to someone I suspected was reselling because I knew they'd do a better job finding a destination for them on eBay than I would in our local free group.

In the end of the day, my goal is to keep stuff out of the landfill, and I suppose resellers are a just a scammy, middleman part of the stuff-moving ecosystem that gets these items to someone who wants them. Even at a reseller's markup, having this stuff circulating in communities instead of sitting in a landfill reduces demand for new products and hopefully diminishes - even just a little - how much has to be extracted.

TBH even if they got robo taxis working (and I think that's a big if without lidar) they'd be even more of a lightning rod for vandalism than personal vehicles and dealerships. They'd more thoroughly represent Tesla than personal cars and they'd be safer targets than dealerships since they could be summoned into a known (camera free) environment which would minimize risk to anyone who wanted to paint it or drop a rock on it or whatever. Especially if they were active long enough for their behavior and routes to get predictable.

The panels falling off and hubcaps flying off seem like a decent reason to avoid the cybertrucks at least

Agreed, that mess was when I realized he was a tool. That said, most CEOs are some flavor of bastard and buying almost anything means giving your money to some exec who doesn't deserve it so I can understand overlooking it at that point.

As the competition got better and he got more overtly fashy, buying a Tesla became more and more a political statement rather than a normal purchase. Sucks for the early adopters but most ire seems to be reserved for the cybertrucks.

I've heard that before for porche, but I've also heard that electric vehicles tend to require less maintenance overall since there are many fewer mechanical parts. I don't know anything about this particular model so I guess I'm wondering which holds true in this case.

I think there's still plenty of spots for nuanced discussions on the net (including this instance), but you probably won't have much luck finding them in communities dedicated to posting memes.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect absurd qualifications for an absurd salary, let alone a broad understanding of the basics of his industry.

This is very cool - not quite as cute as the canoo (RIP) but it seems quite practical and I hope it makes it to market - I'd like a small electric truck someday.

The genre name might not be common knowledge (and I'm not sure that's the case) but cyberpunk aesthetics and themes and plot points have infiltrated so much of modern science fiction that cyberpunk communities frequently have trouble drawing a line around genre works vs mainstream scifi. And this is after companies and brand marketing "picked it too early" and made it a joke in the 90s. It just sort of kept going quietly, looked more and more prescient, and in the end, it had suffused through so many imaginations and works that it kind of was the mainstream.

I'm not sure the same thing will happen with solarpunk but given the way cyberpunk seems to have acclimatized us to our current distopia, I sort of hope solarpunk can do something similar. Maybe wear the rough edges and propaganda fears off building a society that actually looks out for its people and the habitats they live in.

If it works I'll definitely post a step-by-step writeup here in the zerowaste community, and I'll link from this comment if I remember!

This is really cool! I'll do some more reading and tests first but this might be what I go with for an answer. If it's as effective and non-oily as he says, it sounds perfect. Plus the fact that it's just wax and oil and can be remelted if it scrapes or leaks, makes it sound pretty fixable long term.

Edit: also I don't usually watch nonfiction YouTube stuff but I think I'm going to check out the rest of his content, thanks!

Probably though I hate to throw something away just because the outer layer is failing. I guess that's why I wore this one till it got like this. I'd like a leather jacket if it fit like this one (and if I got it second hand, I wouldn't be good with buying one new). Someone gave me one once but it fit me like a tent so I had to pass it along.

That's a really cool idea! Tbh when I asked the question I'd been thinking of the old 'oilskins' used by sailors in fantasy books (and history) which I think were sailcloth or canvas coated in tar, so this would actually be pretty close to what I had in mind.