As composting enthusiasts who want to build a project around compost, we had been intrigued about the waste ever since the council had announced their new bio waste collection program and advertised everywhere for people in town to collect and deliver theirs. They handed out buckets, a few containers appeared in two neighbourhoods, and it had something to do with the sustainable development goals.

But no composting facility anywhere in the council, so we asked around and finally got hold of the right person. Found out the waste is carried a hundred kilometers away to a huge central facility, once a week.

Now we need to find out if they let us do better than that?

A good overview and link collection around small scale hydro power technologies

Small reminders for stupidly big cars

Small reminders for stupidly big cars

If you have tried several self-hosting platforms like the above, please share your experience.

I have so far only tried Yunohost and I'm quite satisfied. It does help to read French, sometimes solutions can be hidden in French forum topics.

Coop Cloud seems to be docker-based, as far as I understand, and I just never managed to wrap my head around containers and why I should use them. Not sure though if Yunohost does container stuff in the background that I am not aware of?

I've just started to use my Yunohost installation for some small scale collaborative stuff so I really hope it scales (to probably not more than 100 users) and keeps running smoothly. Starting to host common stuff is a little more scary than just fucking up my own private files.

Web 3, nature conservacy, crypto-somthing, blockchain? So this organization appears to be buying land to then put in the hands of stewardship organizations. One of the places being bought under this scheme is Traditional Dream Factory.

Their plans and ideas seem sound, I just don't understand the crypto part and tokens and what these are supposed to accomplish as opposed to something like traditional shares or just write everything down on a piece of paper?

Is crypto ultimately just an ultra complex way of record keeping here?

I would really appreciate your opinions. In terms of activities and spaces, a lot of the TDF setup is very close to what we would like to build, so I try to study and understand different ways people organize such projects.

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.

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

I do hope this fits here, in case it doesn't feel free to remove.

cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/2383962

Finally, there's a no-tech-knowledge-needed alternative to Etsy. I'm really excited about where this will go!

So I've noticed that when in a verbal conversation I often throw in some contribution that either would be perceived as negative, or making everything about myself, or being perceived as irrelevant. I guess I am searching something like the wheel of emotions, but for conversational nuance, preferrably with examples, or a similar resource, to explore this further.

I'd be interested if other ND folk have also observed what looks like a higher than usual percentage of displaced people or people moving abroad or living in a multicultural background in their families?

It might have nothing to do with it, but I sometimes suspect that I chose to live abroad because other people's expectations in social situations are more lenient, or because all culture is alien to me anyways? I also, just like my grandmother before me, proceeded to raise a child that isn't really fully part of either culture of his parents - another overly self-aware alien.

But then it's also such a common thing in so many people's lives that I might be looking for connections where there are none.