a repository of information, tools, civil disobedience, gardening to feed your neighbors, as well as punk-aesthetics. the revolution is an unending task: joyous, broken, and sublime
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Latest Posts by solarpiracy - Page 4
Learn Stuff! // LINK
hobbies masterpost!
a really excellent way to reduce anxiety is to pick up a new hobby. find something you’re interested in, learn it, then use it as a healthy and productive way to cope.
learn to play guitar
learn how to make interactive stories with the free program Twine
learn how to make pixel art
learn another language
learn how to build a ship in a bottle
learn how to develop your own film
learn how to embroider
learn how to make chiptunes (8-bit music)
learn how to make origami (the art of paper folding)
learn how to make tumblr themes
learn how to make jewelry
learn how to make candy
learn how to make terrariums
learn how to make your own perfume
learn how to make your own tea
learn how to build birdhouses
learn how to read tarot cards
learn how to make zines
learn how to code
learn how to whittle (wood carving)
learn how to make candles
learn how to make clay figurines
learn how to knit scarves
learn how to become an amateur astronomer
learn some yoyo tricks
learn how to start a collection
learn how to start body building
learn how to edit wikipedia articles
learn how to decorate iphone cases
learn how to do freelance writing
learn how to make your own cards and
learn how to make your own envelopes
learn how to play the ukulele
learn how to make gifs
learn how to play chess
learn how to juggle
learn how to guerrilla garden
learn how to chart your family history
learn how to keep chickens
learn how to do yoga
learn how to do magic
learn how to raise and breed butterflies
learn how to play dungeons & dragons
learn how to skateboard
learn how to do parkour
learn how to surf
learn how to arrange flowers
learn how to make stuffed animals
This morning I purchased PlanB using the $10 off coupon which you can find here: http://planbonestep.com/coupon.aspx
It could happen to anyone. People bury a person alive to scare them or to get rid of them. In this situation, rely only on yourself.
Do not waste oxygen. In a classic coffin there’s only enough oxygen for about an hour, maybe two. Inhale deeply, exhale very slowly. Once inhaled - do not swallow, or you will start to hyperventilate. Do not light up lighters or matches, they will waste oxygen. Using a flashlight is allowed. Screaming increases anxiety, which causes increased heartbeat and therefore - waste of oxygen. So don’t scream.
Shake up the lid with your hands. In some cheap low-quality coffins you will be able to even make a hole (with an engagement ring or a belt buckle.)
Cross your arms over your chest, holding onto your shoulders with your hands, and pull the shirt off upward. Tie it in a knot above your head, like so: This will prevent you from suffocating when the dirt falls on your face.
Kick the lid with your legs. In some cheap coffins the lid is broken or damaged already after being buried, due to the weight of the ground above it.
As soon as the lid breaks, throw and move the dirt that falls through in the direction of your feet. When it takes up a lot of space, try pressing the ground to the sides of the coffin with your legs and feet. Move around a bit.
Whatever you do - your main goal is to sit up: dirt will fill up the empty space and move to your advantage, so no matter what - do not stop and try breathing steadily and calmly.
Get up. Remember: the dirt in the grave is very loose, so battling your way up will be easier than it seems. It’s the other way around during a rainy weather however, since water makes dirt heavy and sticky.
(I saw this and thought that it would help with the heat wave since a lot of people don’t have AC)
Heat Wave Peppermint Spray (AC in a Bottle)
10g peppermint essential oil 10g menthol essential oil Equal volume of solubilizer
200mL aloe vera juice
Weigh the essential oils out into an empty spray bottle, and top off with an equal amount of solubilizer. Swirl to combine. Add a small amount of aloe vera juice and shake gently to combine. Add the rest of the aloe vera, shake gently to combine.
To use, spritz on bare skin. If you cover your torso and your limbs, you will likely end up with goosebumps! I find this keeps me quite cool/cold for upwards of 20 minutes.
If you don’t want to use the solubilizer you can leave it out and just shake thoroughly before each use. That means the mixture will not emulsify at all and you’ll likely have troubles getting it to spritz evenly.
my economics professor mentioned that my state's old growth logging ban was lifted (in a positive tone) and i already didn't like her but i almost went apeshit istg. @headspace-hotel's posts actually changed my brain chemistry. i rambled to a few classmates about them afterwards and went into a research spiral for half the afternoon too. i'm so angry that i'll never see them. i'll never be able to walk on six inches of topsoil. i'll be lucky to walk on one. economics are a joke i want my goddamn earth back
incredibly funny to realise the US supports single-family zoning so much on the exact same material basis as the Wehrbauer system
Herb salts are super easy and they're both practical and pretty. I used rosemary, oregano, sage, and a bit of thyme in this batch, with rosemary as the dominant flavor. By using fresh herbs you let the liquids soak into the salt for a stronger flavor than you'd get just mixing dried herbs with spice. I'm not giving measurements because I don't really use them, though you can find recipes online with specific proportions. Really you just need enough salt to absorb this moisture and not dominate the herb flavors.
Take your herbs and rinse them clean , then pat them dry. Strip all the leaves off the stems and put them into a grinder. If you don't have a grinder, you could get the same effect by dicing really really tiny or by using a mortar and pestle, but really the grinder speeds things up a lot.
Grind the leaves of the herbs until they're finely chopped. Then add some salt. I use a coarse kosher salt, because it gets ground a bit finer in this process, and a chunky salt is great texture for most of the uses I'd have for this. If you're making it as popcorn seasoning though, a fine salt is better, and run the grinder extra long to make it super fine. For coarse salt, just pulse the grinder a bit to get things combined evenly.
Then everything gets spread out on parchment paper in a pan and put into the oven at 200 degrees for roughly half an hour, or until dry to touch. You could also just let it air dry like this for several days if you don't want to use the oven. Then just stick it into an airtight container to store! If you skip the oven drying stage you'll need to keep it in the fridge and use it within about a month, but if you dry it it's good for ages. The best flavor is in the first six months though.
The vegan to ecofascist pipeline
one of my “special interests” in the past couple of years has been exploring fast fashion vs. slow fashion. it has been a long journey trying to find clothes that actually 1) fit me 2) look good 3) are made from material that is not actively shoving plastic in the ecosystem 4) involve ethical labor, fair trade, fairly compensated, etc
before i did this research, i really had no clue about fabrics or fashion brands. i used to think i had zero interest in fashion, in fact.
i grew up wearing walmart and thrift store clothes, and when i went to college i bought clothes from target and asos. something started to shift a little bit when i found vintage resellers on etsy and ebay… those clothes were so unique. but a lot of the vintage clothes were polyester blends, stiff, and would fall apart as easily as my asos clothes. i would leave them hanging in my closet and never wear them. i would wear the same old t shirts and jeggings every day. i felt like it was impossible to ever wear comfortable clothes, or ever feel good in clothes, so why bother?
it started with linen. linen is very comfortable and pretty sustainable. i was amazed that i didn’t feel the urge to rip my clothes off when i wore linen. lightbulb number one.
a friend let me borrow a nooworks dress, and i went to the store and got some overalls. wow. overalls. lightbulb number two. holy shit, you can wear overalls. you know how people say “not binary or non-binary but a secret third thing.” that’s overalls.
i realized i loved the bonkers prints that nooworks had, and all of it was soft, and made ethically. it was a higher price point than i was used to, which gave me pause. but then you realize: we’re not supposed to be buying dumb clothes every other weekend. and isn’t a slightly higher price point for soft clothes that you won’t want to tear off your body worth it?
so i started my research. i made a spreadsheet. the prices can be all over the place across brands, so i made a column for prices. sizes can be all over the place too – people always ask me “where is the plus size slow fashion?” it’s there. just look at the size column. people say “isn’t it better to buy secondhand?” yeah, it is. i have many links to secondhand sources.
if you have any suggestions or additions please let me know, it is a living document.
Better Future Program’s 3,000 free resources have all been officially moved to Notion and not only are much easier to read on BOTH desktop and mobile, but have fully functional search and sorting options! Go check out our Liberation Library to support a Black-, queer-, and woman-owned nonprofit!
For the past 64 years, Jim Enote has planted a waffle garden, sunken garden beds enclosed by clay-heavy walls that he learned to build from his grandmother. This year, he planted onions and chiles, which he waters from a nearby stream. It’s an Indigenous farming tradition suited for the semi-arid, high-altitude desert of the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, where waffle gardens have long flourished and Enote has farmed since childhood.
“They are the inverse of raised beds, and for an area where it is more arid, they’re actually very efficient at conserving water,” said Enote, who leads the Colorado Plateau Foundation to protect Indigenous land, traditions, and water. Each interior cell of the waffle covers about a square foot of land, just below ground-level, and the raised, mounded earthen walls are designed to help keep moisture in the soil.
Similar sunken beds for growing food with less water have been used globally in arid regions, arising independently by Indigenous farmers, including across distinct Pueblo tribes in the Southwest. “When you have ecological equivalents you often have cultural equivalents,” said Enote. As climate change deepens, he sees this tradition as one of many ways to adapt while building food security and sovereignty.
Comrade I picked a bad time to get radicalized when it comes to safe organization. I’ve already linked up with my local DSA chapter but there’s really not much I can do except for attend zoom meetings and kind of just sit around with my dick in my hand. Besides sending money and going to more outdoor protests, do you have any suggestions on what to do about direct action while a meet up with my local groups is pretty much impossible?
First of all, welcome to the insurrection, friend! We’re glad to have you on!
I don’t think you’re alone in this boat. Material conditions are such that lots of people are getting radicalized-- they’re being evicted, they’re fleeing climate apocalypse, they’re seeing their loved ones die from cops and coronavirus and they’re helpless to stop it. They’re getting deported and fired and laid off and atomized and can’t even afford to subscribe to shitty streaming services as a palliative force.
Your first instinct-- to find others-- is fundamentally correct. We can only effect real meaningful change in large numbers. We don’t have the cash, but we have the people and we got the guillotine.
Do you have a job? Do you have a union? If the answers are yes and no, respectively, now is the time when you can organize more easily with your co-workers outside the control of your boss. Test the waters in friendly conversation with people you can trust not to snitch, and consider organizing your workplace. The IWW has a very useful guide on how to do so.
Do you rent? Consider forming a tenants’ union. Organizing one of these is less dangerous than organizing your workplace, as you don’t report to your landlord regularly. If your landlord tries to kick one of you out, all of you can strike.
Many mutual aid efforts are still ongoing in the face of lockdown. Now more than ever, we need to care for each other. Food Not Bombs probably has a chapter near you, and the ones around where I’ve lived continue to operate (albeit with precautions like gloves). Join one of those efforts. I’d focus on housing and food-related mutual aid.
Finally, use this time to learn a useful revolutionary skill. You can grow a tiny garden even if you’re in an apartment, you can learn to brew cider, mead, beer, and wine. You can learn to sew and mend, build structures, forage, survive in the woods, read revolutionary lit, and shoot with/care for a gun. Get comfortable carrying heavy things on your back, and expand your cardio abilities (lots and lots of running). Not everyone can run, of course, but do whatever you can to make it easier to escape or throw a punch (when we get back into contact with each other, take up a self-defense art). Once you know the basics, teach them to someone else.
If anybody else has ideas, please put them here!
And again, welcome, comrade, and good luck.
Vegans who are vegan because “but the earth” and “but the farmers” and “but the animals” and all this other hoity-toity nonsense and not just because they can’t or don’t wanna eat meat/animal products make me fuckin tired man.
Blackness to me is inherently gender nonconforming largely because we will never fit into binary white supremacist notions of manhood and womanhood.
Outcomes of scientific studies such as Marks-Block’s often affirm what Native people already know from tradition and experience, but that doesn’t mean the studies aren’t useful, Tripp says.
“We knew what the outcome was going to be,” he says. “But nobody listens if it isn’t written down like that.”
Being able to cite scientific literature may be especially important as Indigenous groups push for more rights, especially on “ceded territories” they still claim but no longer own. For example, Karuks want more burning rights on Forest Service land, while neighboring Yuroks are pushing to co-manage and conduct controlled burns in Redwood National Park.
Happy disability pride month!! Pls help a disabled muslim lesbian in the middle east (me) escape an abusive household + arranged marriage that's been fixed for later this year.
I'm making a new post bc old one has lots of notes but the donations have slowed down a lot and my situation has now become potentially time sensitive. You can read the old post or the link for more details.
Please consider donating and sharing this post! I also have made posts on instagram and twitter that you can share. Here's also a link to proof (bc for whatever reason people think I'm scamming...like I'm making this up for fun? lmao.)
I'm so so grateful to everyone who is and has been helping me, thank you so much, i appreciate each and everyone of you ❤️
5,312/10,000
DoorDash workers are going on strike tomorrow (July 31st, 2021). They’re demanding tip transparency and a base pay of at least $4.25 per hour. Don’t cross the picket line.
FTA: “In the afternoon, the authors found the canopy of a forested park cooled things down by 1.8 °C, which is higher than previous estimates.
Single trees had no such effect, but in the evening, those single trees made a difference. In the study, a single 15-meter-tall tree (49 feet) would cast a shadow a 14-meter shadow in the afternoon. By the evening, that tree’s shadow increased to 56 meters. Practically, this meant that just a smattering of canopies could cover the same amount of ground as a dense forest by the end of the day.
Together, when the shadows of these individual canopies combined to cover 50 percent of an area, researchers measured significantly lower temperatures – up to 1.4 °C lower, to be exact.
Even after sundown, when the canopies of scattered trees only covered about 20 percent of the area, the team noticed a cooling effect.
In summertime, urban areas without much greenery can turn into heat islands, and rising temperatures from climate change are going to make it even harder for city dwellers to find relief.
“Evenings are not quite the respite from heat that we once had,” says Alonzo.
"These distributed trees do help the city cool off in the evening and that’s important for human health.“”
Vultures are holy creatures.
Tending the dead.
Bowing low.
Bared head.
Whispers to cold flesh,
“Your old name is not your king.
I rename you ‘Everything.’”
A recent study shows that lettuce can be grown in greenhouses that filter out wavelengths of light used to generate solar power, demonstrating the feasibility of using see-through solar panels in greenhouses to generate electricity. https://ift.tt/2NsbAH5
“It’s great to grow something and say, ‘Wow, I really like to grow this little one. I like to really grow this and sell it and try to make a living on it,’” Tisbert said. “Well, you’ve got to find a market. Everybody has to have a niche. People are trying to figure out where to go. How can I sell it?”
That’s where Salvation Farms comes in.
“When I can’t market the product, I have Salvation Farms,” said Tisbert, who has been working with the organization since 2006. “They show up, and I give them things that I can’t sell in a timely manner. I need to get it out the door because I need my space.”
Salvation Farms is part of the Vermont Gleaning Collective, which consists of a number of organizations that glean throughout the state.
In a small patch of green space on Andry Street in New Orleans’ lower ninth ward, nine garden beds lie next to one another, each 6 feet by 9 feet, each the size of one standard solitary-confinement cell. Each garden bed grows a mix of herbs and flowers, among them pansies, stinging nettles, onions, mugwort. They are a mix of plants with medicinal properties and some that just bring pleasure to the eyes, and their growth is limited to the parts of the tiny space where a person would be free to move in a solitary cell, with space blocked off for where the furniture—nothing more than a bed and a toilet—would be. The plants in each garden are chosen by someone in solitary confinement and planted by a volunteer gardener on the outside.
The result is both symbolic and produces plants with tangible uses, says jackie sumell (who does not capitalize her name), who conceived the project; plants with healing properties will be redistributed to people who need them through what sumell calls a “prisoner’s apothecary.” The solitary beds are eventually overrun with plant life, a visual representation of a world without prisons, an idea that forms the project’s core mission.
Typically, a volunteer gardener on the outside will send a list of plants to an incarcerated gardener. The list provides plenty of options but is limited to what will thrive in the climate and season. They collaborate on a gardening plan and a calendar, often with a small floor plan filled in by the incarcerated gardener laying out the positioning of plants.
We offer this ‘zine in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Spring of 2020. Our unsheltered relatives cannot simply “stay home if they are sick” and “constantly wash their hands” as instructed by callous politicians who, predictably, had no plans to ensure the wellbeing of our relatives.
With all the talk about telling people to start planting and growing crops to feed themselves and their communities during this time of crisis, I’m surprised I haven’t seen much about HOW MUCH to plant to feed people. Here’s a good article to serve as a jumping-off point, to give people an idea of when to plant and how much to plant to keep people fed. Keep in mind that unless you live on a fairly sizeable plot of land that has ideal growing conditions, you probably won’t be able to completely feed a family of four, at least with traditional gardening methods. However, you can still heavily supplement your diet with homegrown food if you plot your garden carefully.
Some things you can do to save space include growing plants in stackable towers rather than flat rows. Not everything can grow this way, but growing herbs or even strawberries or some kinds of tomatoes in them can save a lot of space. Bonus points if you can get some vertical vining plants like beans or tomatoes to grow up the sides of them to maximize the space used.
Hanging planters can also be used for things like tomatoes, herbs, some berries, etc. The people who grew up watching TV in the 2000s may remember ads for the topsy-turvy tomato planter. I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of them, but it may be good inspiration for creative DIY hanging planters.
Many people don’t seem to know this (to be fair, it’s not very intuitive), but small melons and gourds can be grown vertically on a trellis. You will need pantyhose or something else that can act like a sling for when the fruit gets large enough, and you’ll also want to make sure the trellis is very sturdy. Here is an example of a watermelon growing on a trellis, with squash growing in the background:
Other good options that require a bit more DIY are hydroponics towers and walls. It’s basically just a series of pipes with holes for plants to grow out of. The only downside is they will require very regular fertilization and supplementation with other micronutrients that are essential for plant growth, because the plants are typically grown in either a non-nutritious medium like coconut coir or nothing at all.
Planter walls are the next step down, basically just building shelves with pots in them to fill with soil. Put these on a wall that gets good morning sun and some afternoon sunlight for best results. These and hydroponics both also have the advantage of being able to hook up to your gutters so that rainwater will go towards watering your plants rather than just being wasted.
If you want to get really fancy, aquaponics is the next step up. With aquaponics, you create a system that circulates water between plants and a tank full of fish. The fish waste provides fertilizer for the plants, and the plants help filter out the waste so the water stays cleaner. I’ve heard they’re a bit tricky to establish, but once you find the right balance, all you’ll need to do is feed the fish. This has the added bonus of providing a source of fish for people who can’t eat things like nuts and legumes but need protein. Here is a link to an article explaining what aquaponics is, how it works, and how it differs from hydroponics.
I also want to add that if you don’t have the space or ability to maintain a large garden, there are other options. Find or create a group with access to enough food to supplement or completely fulfill your diet, and offer another service. If you have space for a vermicompost bin or tower, that can still help contribute to the garden. Learning other skills like soap making, cooking, sewing/knitting/crocheting, electrical skills like wiring and soldering, welding, woodworking/carpentry, etc. means you will still have valuable skills to contribute towards the group, and this will set up the basis for a larger mutual aid network within your community.
Despite their enormous ecological values, new research reveals we don’t understand how most arachnid species are faring right now – or do much to protect them.
Spiders need our help, and we may need to overcome our biases and fears to make that happen.“The feeling that people have towards spiders is not unique,” says Marco Isaia, an arachnologist and associate professor at the University of Turin in Italy. […] A new paper by Isaia and 18 other experts digs into the conservation status of Europe’s 4,154 known spider species and finds that only a few have any protection at the national level. Most have never even been adequately assessed or studied in detail, so we don’t know much about their extinction risk or their ecological needs.
Italy, for example, is home to more than 1,700 spider species, but fewer than 450 have had their conservation status assessed and only two have any legal protection in that country. Greece, meanwhile, has nearly 1,300 spider species within its borders, but scientists have only assessed the conservation needs of 32 of them. None are legally protected. […] “What surprised us most while assembling the data was the extremely poor level of knowledge about the conservation status, extinction risk and factors threatening the survival of European spider species, despite Europe being one of the most studied regions of the world in terms of biodiversity,” says Filippo Milano, the study’s lead author […].
And of course, this is not unique to Europe; other countries and continents fail to protect arachnids, and for similar reasons.
“Spiders are understudied, underappreciated and under attack by both the climate crisis and humans affecting our environment,” says spider expert and science communicator Sebastian Alejandro Echeverri, who was not affiliated with the study. “These are one of the most diverse groups of animals that we don’t really think about on a day-to-day basis. There’s like 48,000-plus species, but my experience is that most people don’t really have a sense of how many are in their area. In the United States, for example, we have just 12 spiders on the endangered species list out of the thousands of species recorded here.” This lack of information or protection at the national level affects international efforts. At the time the research was conducted the IUCN Red List, which includes conservation status assessments for 134,400 species around the world, covered just 301 spider species, eight of which are from Europe. That number has since increased — to all of 318 species from the order Araneae.
As we see with so many other wide-ranging species, a transnational border is often not a spider’s friend. The paper identifies several examples of species protected in one country but not its neighbor, despite being found in both places. According to the paper only 17 spider species are protected by conservation legislation in two or more European countries.
“Animals aren’t limited by our political lines on a map,” notes Echeverri. […]
And maybe, along the way, their work can help inspire people who fear spiders to look at them in a different light — or even to help look for them, like the Map the Spider project that asks citizen scientists to upload locations of the complex webs woven by elusive purse-web spiders. […]
“Focusing on spiders has been a very important choice […],” Isaia says. “You may study their web, their venom, their bizarre behaviors, the interactions between different species, their role as predators, their amazing taxonomical and functional diversity, their key role in the maintaining ecosystem equilibrium. You may also use them as sources of inspiration in architecture and visual arts. Aren’t these good reasons to find them attractive?”
——-
Headline and text published by: John R. Platt. “We Need to Talk About Spider Conservation.” As republished by Salon, 23 May 2021. Originally published by Platt at The Revelator, 10 May 2021.
The Treasury of Atreus (or Tomb of Agamemnon) is an impressive tholos tomb located on the Panagitsa Hill at Mycenae, Greece. It was constructed around 1250 B.C. The tomb is constructed in the style of other tholoi of the Mycenaean world, nine in total around the citadel of Mycenae. With its monumental shape and grandeur, the Treasury of Atreus is one of the most impressive monuments surviving from Mycenaean Greece.
The lintel stone above the doorway weighs 120 tons and measures 8.3 x 5.2 x 1.2 meters, the largest in the world. The tomb was used for an unknown period. Mentioned by Pausanias, it was still visible in 1879 when the German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the shaft graves under the agora in the Acropolis at Mycenae. Although the tomb has no relationship with Atreus or Agamemnon, it was named thus by Heinrich Schliemann and the name has been used ever since.
It is formed of a semi-subterranean room of circular plan, with a corbel arch covering that is ogival in section. With an interior height of 13.5 meters and diameter of 14.5 meters, it was the tallest and widest dome in the world for over a thousand years. Great care was taken in positioning the enormous stones to guarantee the vault’s stability over time in bearing the force of compression from its own weight. This resulted in a perfectly smoothed internal surface, onto which could be placed gold, silver and bronze decoration.
The tholos was entered from an inclined uncovered hall or dromos, 36 meters long with dry-stone walls. A short passage led from the tholos to the actual burial chamber, which was dug out in a cubical shape.
The entrance portal to the tumulus was richly decorated: half-columns in green limestone with zig-zag motifs on the shaft, a frieze with rosettes above the architrave of the door, and spiral decoration in bands of red marble that closed the triangular aperture above an architrave. The capitals are influenced by ancient Egyptian examples. Other decorative elements were inlaid with red porphyry and green alabaster.
This is from the 2019 Denver Pow Wow that my dad walked in. I was lucky enough to be one of the photographers on the floor for the event. ❤