A group of friends is currently planning to approach the local council about getting to rent or being ceded some kind of facility to use as community space and find out about other support options that might be available for such a project.

While working with local government (or depending on them) has its risks and might turn out to be the wrong approach, we will at least consider it in the beginning - it might be surprisingly easy to get a space in this way, considering the many empty and abandoned properties where we live. Stepping in with a project the council deems support-worthy could really get us started.

So for that, I would like to design a small brochure or presentation with our ideas and find that rather hard. I have a list with what we would possibly include in such a space, but could do with some inspiration as to how to present it so it highlights how the community will profit from this project.

Has anyone ever designed such a document, or knows of one they could share? Or has any ideas to share? Successful recipes could and should be copied, documented, passed on.

So far, imagining loads of space and a factory-sized building, the ideal community space could have:

Space for Community, Collaboration, Cooperation

Compost and growing

Outdoor event space

Metal/vehicle workshop

Community Kitchen

Office and collaboration space

Wood/Electronics workshop

CNC/3D printing/Hacker space

Indoor event space

Storage

Mushroom lab

Preference of community hosting instead of self hosting has recently come up in a permacomputing chat, and in this sense I am trying to set up a tiny yunohost server that can serve my local alternative community - a series of mostly rural living people spread throughout the landscape around a small towns. I want to support local barter and trade, local tool sharing and connections between people.

I am trying to feel my way towards what functions could be useful for a mostly non-tech community, and what is out there to self-host? And what is especially useful and makes sense for local communities? Event calendar, small ads and some sort of map functions come to mind, what else? I guess a lot of what Facebook does.

As I don't see myself in the position to replace Facebook anytime soon but would like to pave the way towards having Facebook and the like replaced by many small scale solutions like the server I am building, I would like the server to have other useful stuff. Currently using CryptPad for collaborative editing, got a SearXNG instance and a digital book shelf with stuff related to gardening, foraging, homesteading, renewables, but none of this is really local. Maybe offering people a small portfolio website where they can put their offerings, skills?

I currently have an Epicyon instance installed that does all of this, it has skill sharing, item sharing, even a calendar, and I really like what it does - but I'm afraid it might be a little tough on the non-tech users.

Please dump your suggestions and ideas about what could live on such a server. As I am still a baby admin I'm not too far in to notice that people's eyes glaze over when I mention things like 'server' or 'search engine'. Trying to keep it intuitive enough for a big enough group might be a challenge, especially when keeping it all clean and FOSS. Probably needs to work really well on mobile phone as well.

The abundance of digital storage and processing power has caused an explosion in wastefulness, which shows in things like ridiculous hardware requirements for computing even the most trivial tasks. Permacomputing is about using computation only when it has a strengthening effect on ecosystems.

Looking for perspectives about the above. On my meanderings around the web I've found cybersecurity is all the rage now, cybersecurity experts are desperately needed. Looks a bit like a protection scheme to me - first have everyone save their data in the cloud and buy a smart fridge, then flood everything with ethical hacking courses and cybersecurity certifications.

Reminds me of my marketing translation days working on copy where you always were supposed to outpace your competitors by using some [insert software here]-as-a-service solution to 'compete in an increasingly fast-paced business environment'. Yay rat race.

On the other hand, as to cybersecurity experts, we will need smart people who can re-stupidify our smart appliances when they go rogue.

What would you consider ethical work within IT? Now and in a brighter future?

I have finally contracted my electricity with them. I didn't even know much about their story, but it's a nice example of cooperative success and EU-wide support among cooperatives.

Also, it looks like PT is fully renewable now anyways, no more coal!

I think what needs to be done now is evaluate the impact that each of these technologies have on the landscape.

Some people seem to have problems with the wind turbine noise and vibration, but as the turbines are placed on top of the hills not many people are affected. All turbines are placed by large corporations, as far as I know. This seems to be a little different in Germany if I remember well, anyone knows any details?

Hydro power has a large impact on the landscape, whole villages have been flooded an the people relocated, ancient common lands expropriated. But the remaining villages all have electricity now. There's irrigation water to grow many crops. Built by the state (nowadays, half-private state-adjacent corporations).

Solar panels can be used for smaller citizen investments like the above mentioned coopernico cooperative. But solar is not necessarily the best technology for everywhere - solar panels are high tech devices for a start, that I cannot produce or repair at home.

Whereas a hydro or wind generator will be based on simpler technology. I have, for example, a stream running through my land that could provide power during 9 month of the year. I'd have to go back into a lot of DIY, engineering, experimenting with no guarantee for success if I wanted to tap into it.

I'd say Portugal in general is on a good way, with a lot of room for improvement. I would want to see more microgeneration, and more citizen initiatives, I'm sure we can work on that!

To create a new, non-pathologizing paradigm around our minds. Lots of good texts.

Hi, if you identify as on the spectrum, neurodiverse, ASD, ADHD - I would be curious if your family is multicultural, and if you or a relative has moved to a foreign country or lives in a foreign country. For example, I have grandparents on both parents side who moved abroad. I moved abroad myself as an adult, and have a sibling who has done so as well.

This seems to be a response to feeling alien in one's own culture, therefore having less of an incentive of staying. And then it increases the alien-ness for the next generation. I wonder where are correlation and causation here. Maybe they just intertwine, like some neurofunky globetrotter's dna.

As I am terminally busy/outside/working on an unfinished list of herbs, I will share a link to one of my favourite regional studies, with a warm "Thank you!!" to the authors who made this publicly available and kindly translated it into English for a larger public to benefit from it. May the traditional knowledge not get lost!

ETHNOBOTANY IN THE CENTER OF PORTUGAL (SANTARÉM) N. Gaspar*, J. Godinho*, T. Vasconcelos**, D. Caldas*, P. Mendes*, O. Barros*

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/4507295

Institution: MIT Lecturer: Prof. Norvin A. Richards University Course Code: MIT 24.900 Subject: #linguistics Description: This class provides some answers to basic questions about the nature of human language. Throughout the course, we examine a number of ways in which human language is a complex but law-governed mental system. Much of the class is devoted to studying some core aspects of this system in detail; we also spend individual classes discussing a number of other issues, including how language is acquired, how languages change over time, language endangerment, and others.

A few times I've come upon the power of a common language in the last few days.

I've seen a video about a meeting of Amazonian pajés (shamans) and herbalists sharing and maintaining traditional plant use, facilitated through the common language Portuguese, I've read about the success of the Zapatistas where native people are helped in their efforts by the common language Spanish. And just now a post in Anarchism & Social Ecology mixing Spanish and English just as comfortably as my family juggles three languages at home.

Do you know of other examples?

I thought one of the non-evil possible uses of a LLM could be to create a new language like Esperanto, and ideally it would simply be a mix of English and Spanish, to connect a maximum number of people? Or are artificial languages always doomed to fail?

Edit: title, because there is not one language of solarpunk