bloomer

You know the rules: If you have any good news to share, peronsal or global, big or small. Share it here!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8742707

Renewable energy - solar panels and wind turbines - have become staggeringly cheap in recent years, beating fossil fuels on price. Great news for the economy, energy security, and combatting climate change. But there's a catch. What do you do when the wind's not blowing or the sun's not shining? Now, though, the final piece of the puzzle is here like never before: batteries. Batteries have seen their price absolutely crash. And that's unlocking round-the-clock renewable energy that's cheaper than burning fossil fuels. Given the fuel crisis triggered by the war on Iran, this couldn't come at a more crucial moment.

Brad Lancaster of harvestingrainwater.org shows us his solar water heater...

He hasn't paid a dime for a hot shower in 30 years...great way to screw the gas company.

From Brad Lancaster: Our batch-style solar hot water heater was designed by Solar Toby and Bill Cunningham of https://www.southwest-solar.com/.

It was sized, and built around, the salvaged double-glazed tempered glass we got from Bill. Two pieces of 1-inch thick fiberglass insulation with foil backing heat taped together is what the batch/box is made of. The galvanized sheet metal on the exterior is just to protect the insulation from woodpeckers.

We used gas hot water heater tanks, because they have a flue pipe down their centers that results in more surface area for faster heating than you'd get with an electric water heater that has no flue pipe. And I misspoke in the video. We got the water heaters new (not salvaged), then disassembled them, and painted them black (using high temp black paint for grills and such) for use as solar water heaters.

It has worked great as our sole source of hot water for two households of 4 permanent residents total for over 30 years.

For more info on affordable and effective passive solar heating and cooling strategies check out Brad's website https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/s...

and the full-color edition of Brad's book "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition", which you can get at deep discount, direct from Brad, at https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/p...

The book has a whole chapter and an entire appendix on sun & shade harvesting.

It turns out the world may not be quite so contaminated, it's just the research laboratories.

Scientists may have been unknowingly inflating microplastics pollution estimates, and the surprising source could be their own lab gloves. A University of Michigan study found that common nitrile and latex gloves release tiny particles called stearates, which closely resemble microplastics and can contaminate samples during testing. In some cases, this led to wildly exaggerated results, forcing researchers to track down the unexpected culprit.

I love science. I don't mean that disingenuously . I do kinda love that years of research on this topic asking the big important questions, and it all gets tripped up by someone eventually asking the small, easily forgettable, procedural question.

mr president, your hired sir

Silly cat, I said weekly not daily!

Hello! Hi! Yes! Hello! This is the weekly bloomer thread. Tell us something that spreads that bloomer energy! It can be something huge, like some positive international news or it can be something small and nice happening in your life.

And as always, pictures of cute bugs are welcome!

Whatever good vibes you got, feel free to share them here! In this thread WE BLOOM!

Time for another bloomer thread in which we post about the good stuff. Be it something big, like a major breakthrough with your org, some good news you want to share, or even something small like "hey, look at this cute bug!" This is a thread where we take a short moment to spread some joy in some very dark times. So if you have something nice to share, share it!

"I've been to the future, we won."

This quote on a t-shirt was brought up in this podcast episode and it made me tear up in the bus. A pretty powerful reaction. The quest in this episode is Rob Hobkins who has written a book called How to Fall in Love with the Future. which is essentially a book that invites us to travel to future worlds we would actually want to live in.

The podcast episode is sort of lib and idealist, but imo it reaches something very important. It for example goes over possible future soundscapes and places like carless cities but the important part is the whole idea of why we should spend time imagining better futures. It made me think about how Marx points out that humans make things first in their mind and how this also applies to the futures we build. We imagine them first.

And if we can only build things that we can imagine and can only imagine doom and despair, then only those get cultivated.

I feel like this might sort of explain the China bloomer/doomer mentalities we now see or the hard crackdown on the solidarity that tried to spring up at the start of covid (it did show some people a possible better world). The machines of conservativity like LLMs also only serve to destroy our ability to dream better futures imo.

So I thought it would be lovely to hear others stories of the futures they imagine. I'll add my own once I've really thought about it. I'd suggest listening to the podcast episode as a primer if your cupboard of better futures is all empty.

I have family out in Arizona and seeing/hearing liberals waking up to the ways water and energy development threatens their future, as well as their lack of inclusion in the so-called democracy that enables it gives me some hope. Maybe it's just liberal reaction to the cheeto?

mad props to this yellowshirted fellow with the courage to wear this to a city council meeting

Could have posted this to the podcast com too, but decided to post here, because I do think things are changing. My anecdotal evidence this time is the podcasts I listen to.

So, around 2020-21 I restarted studies at uni, in social sciences. It's a field I went into, because I had this need to try and change the world. Was definitely altready a leftist, but not yet a marxist and definitely not ML. I was into all the identity stuff, social justice, anti-fascism, anti-racism etc. so I went looking for stuff to listen that would expand my views and found the Upstream podcast. They were nicely social sciency for me and doing all the neurodiversity, body positivity, feminist, etc. things I wanted to know more about.

It's been years and I haven't listened to this podcast in a long long time as it didn't take me long to move past it. I then went back to look at this podcast a few weeks ago and to my surprise they have gone full marxist alongside with me. Just yesterday I listened to their latest with Richard Wolff and Shahram Azhar and found it very enlightening (so much so that today I spent half my workday listening to Dialectic At Work, the episodes called "Crisis of democracy, part 1 and 2" I highly recommend although on some parts I disagree with them.)

The point is that I truly think that anyone with a drive for good understanding of the world around us will come to these same conclusions if the conditions are right and the material is available to them. I find this to be very life giving for myself in these times.

Stolen from here

I don't actually know if this is real

My contribution: My health has improved greatly and I'm feeling better than I have in years. Also look at this stupid bird, how can you look at that unsettling face and not feel joy? He's so happy to be a freak. I love him.

The Great Green Wall is a project adopted by the African Union back in 2007

Finally, some good fucking news

Hey y'all, I know things are pretty fucked right now, just wanted to share an optimistic perspective. (Copied from a comment here).

I have honestly never been more bloomer in my life.

EVERYONE is thinks things suck.
EVERYONE is pissed.
EVERYONE is trying to do something about it.

The only problem is that people don't know why things suck, or how to make it better.

Fascists think things suck because of [minority], and so they want to get rid of [minority].

Liberals think things suck because of the fascists, and so would like everyone to just play nice and we can work this all out, please.

But WE know.
WE know the problem! IT'S CAPITALISM!!!
WE know the solution! KILL CAPITALISM!!!

If everyone in the world woke up tomorrow and knew what we know, the suffering would stop.

The collective rage that we see in society would be directed at the true enemy instead of each other, and nothing in the world is more powerful than people working together to make things better.

The only thing we must do to win, the only thing that truly matters, is to get everyone to understand.

History has blessed us with the ultimate weapon.

A material power that Marx and Lenin and Sankara and Newton could not dream of wielding in their wildest fantasies.

NOW is the moment in history for revolution.
Capitalism WILL fall in our lifetimes.
I'll be surprised if it lasts twenty years.

The contradictions have become undeniable.
The people want change, they just need direction.

And for the first time in history, we have a direct line to every single one of them.

Don't you DARE quit on us.
We need everyone we can get.

Now get back to posting, soldier.

holy shit, are they learning?

Im thankful to be alive. Im thankful for my kids. Im thankful for homegrown tomatoes and roadside peach stands. Im thankful for spaghetti bolognese and real Alfredo sauce. Im thankful for living next to an ocean where i can sit and watch the waves and tune out. Im thankful for being a tiny little spec of insignificant nothing on a mote of dust floating in the beam of a star in the middle of a cosmic vastness that brings me to tears when contemplating its vastness and my place amongst it all. Im thankful for being able to go camping the couple times a year i can afford it, its always low tech and cheap (bedsheets and ramen noodles in cheap walmart/amazon tents) but it affords me a chance to be somewhere semi quiet, semi alone and attempt some self reflection. Lately it placates the urge to go back home when im feeling needlessly wistful.

I think back on my life and there are things im thankful for. Im thankful for the year i spent in a squat in New Orleans sparing for change. Im thankful that year, and the years after spent dealing with drug addiction didnt kill me despite my best efforts. Im thankful for the folks i met out hitching the roads who showed me how to get by. Im thankful to have achieved sobriety (well, 90% anyway) or some semblance of it despite it not bringing the much longed for clarity of mind. Yet. I hope. Im middle aged so who knows. Maybe 2025 is my year.

Im thankful for this place and the mostly anonymous folks that make it up. It tempers my misanthropic tendencies and i enjoy shitposting with some real elites. It encourages me to get better at shitposting and get better at being a good person.

Im thankful i am the age i am. I am at best, halfway through my expected lifespan. Likely closer to 2/3-3/4 of the way through given all the previously referenced drugs and efforts to off myself, but still. I am learning to look back on my life less with embarassment and more with grace, i guess. Beating myself up over it will not change the decisions i have already made. There really is no use crying over spilt milk. All the same, i would not do my 20s again. Likely not my 30s either. Its taken me a long time to even grasp the concept of being comfortable with oneself, let alone understanding that eventually i can get there too. Slowly becoming comfortable enough with my own skin to no longer hide behind a shirt at the pool. Not literally, im a chubby dad bod but metaphorically im getting my swimmers body, svelte even.

Im still broke. Chronically behind on bills, always more going out than coming in. Im not thankful for that, however.

Life seems to pose more questions than answers the older i become and even more so recently than the norm but i have moments where i am happy, life is truly enjoyable, and im thankful for those too. Im trying to make the most of my time here, and despite being generally a misanthrope, and a grumpus, i see how to be happy i think. I guess we will find out.

Anyway. Goodnight yall.