The perplexing part of this for me is charging laptops. Inverters are wildly inefficient but I’m not sure of a way to sufficiently charge (or power) a laptop without one. What are some solutions here?

What you want is called a downconverter. It will accept a wide range of inputs e.g. 22-40V and will output the voltage you need. Example. I am powering a small computer from a 48V e-bike battery with one of those.

Check on your laptop power supply what output voltage it has. 19V is common but there are 12V ones as well. You will need to solder a fitting connector. Some can be bought, but more often than not, they cost the same as a second hand supply.

Isn’t optimism the raison d’être of solarpunk? It is a reaction to dystopias and proposes an optimistic view of the future.

Or maybe we start reclaiming some terms. I am tired of changing labels because some conservative decided to coopt a cool movement. If tomorrow Musk and his followers declare to be solarpunks are we going to nod and move away from the term?

I don’t see how being critical and optimistic about tech is mutually exclusive. And tech is solving some of our issues and will solve more in the future. Not all of them, but to me being tech-positive and understanding technologies can be sustainable is at the core of solarpunk.

About longtermism, ok, I did had that definition of the term. But to me solarpunk is not about being delusional about the climate crisis but still being optimistic about the horizon past it.

What is not solarpunk about longtermism and techno-optimism?

This map was made by French so it may have a bias there. But I know there is a very active lowtech community here in France. As a techno-utopian I spent a long time ignoring them until someone told me that the raspberry pi is lowtech and that I am doing lowtech robotics (wth?) . Here it basically seems to be a synonym for open hardware, with an emphasis on community rather than projects. It is actually pretty chill.

My feeling is that it is a label for anarcho-communists who got tired of explaining their relationships (or lack thereof) with marxist communism. Also used by “communistes libertaires” to emphasize they reject the authoritarian regimes that called themselves communist.

Good to know, thanks!

Ah that must be it sorry. I thought they had decorelated phone numbers and IDs

Groups have an encryption key that I guess you receive from other members upon joining.

Spaces is an underused feature that I hope see gain more traction! It makes Matrix a credible competitor to Slack and Discord

Not really, have used it for years like that. But you need to set it up initially on your phone. The newish feature (less than a year) is that I think they do not require a phone number to set up a new account.

Reading the end of the manga Nausicaa told me everything about the actual reactionary-environmentalism of Miyazaki.

Yes, except this is of all lemmy users, not just slrpnk.net, which is just one of the instances measured.

Yes, but I find it interesting to see that despite having a theme, slrpnk.net is as spread as generic instances and less clustered as, e.g. programming instances, lgbt, anime or nsfw ones.

I also find it interesting to see which communities bridge users from several instances: /c/ubuntu is the link between the french-speaking world and programming? /c/dragonball is the most mainstream anime community. I also find it interesting that the tankies communities, despite a few bridges, look extremely isolated.

Not competent enough to give you advice, but if you are in western Europe, I can recommend you to come to Laval (France) in december, for the next gathering of intermediate vehicles.

I went last year and met hundreds of competent enthusiasts there and learned a lot: https://slrpnk.net/post/3845835

We need both.

There is more to life than basic services, but these should definitely be provided for in a non-profit way.

Pirated many things when I was student. When I started earning a living I realized that the amount they ask for is really not excessive so started paying for several media, but they keep insisting on making sure that what you pay has less usage value than what you pirate. Stopped buying CD when one was designed to not play on my computer. Stopped paying for movies since they decide to tell you where and when you are supposed to watch them.

I gladly pay for books (which half of the time I then pirate to read on my eReader) and video games but the other digital media are trying to establish a toxic relationship and I’ll have none of it.

I really think there is a strong potential in these things. Don’t get fooled by the simplification of seeing opinions in a 2D graph. It helps to explain, but the reality of what these things can (potentially, not sure about this particular implementation) do is to really find across the thousands of dimensions of the debate space, statements that may help you bridge groups.

Imagine person A, strong humanist, no-border, intransigent on human rights. Imagine person B, authoritarian, xenophobic and traditionalist. They are unlikely to agree on statements like “ethnicity X are subhumans” (strong reject by A) and even a middle ground in the form “citizen of ethnicity X should have slightly less rights” is going to be (understandably) rejected by A. The idea is not to find a middle ground on strong disagreements but to find nuggets of agreements in their views from which conversations can started. Statements like “Police should obey the law of the country” is maybe not going to be enthusiastically endorsed by A and B but is a possible ground for agreement.

One of the most positive effect is that both groups can be genuinely surprised by some of the other group opinions. B may not realize that A actually agrees on some anti-smuggling measures and A may not realize that B actually strongly approves of preserving native American rights. Reasons may diverge, implementations diverge, but fishing for agreements is a precious tool in order to mend societies.

This comes from g0v, a very cool (and IMO pretty solarpunk) group. It started as a militant group doing “shadow version” of government agencies in Taiwan, making them better and less “political”. They made a ton of interesting things, one of the core founder is an interesting character

Here is the source: https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality