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Urban gardening seems like a winner. Even if it's just for something like fresh kitchen herbs.
Excellent idea! There's a ton of community gardens near me as well, so this is perfect for my community.
Home maintenance and minor fixes. I’m sure the new homeowners will appreciate that.
There is so much you can just not know about home maintenance. Contacts for honest contractors (that are not cousins or old roommates) can be useful.
Definitely adding this to the list :)
to see: urban beekeeping
to share: composting
I like both of these! Probably worth adding that I'm in a heavy urban area like Chicago
Me too! West Side proud, baby!
Food preservation! Canning, fermenting, dehydrating.
Canning is a bit daunting at first, and you need some space in your kitchen. But fermenting is literally salt + water in a jar, uses no energy (unlike freezing or boiling), and you can do just one small jar with the half-onion that would otherwise die a slow death in your fridge, or three gallons with the squash that was on sale.
Start with a potluck to get to know people
Local foraging: edible and medicinal flora native to the area, along with which plants to avoid. And perhaps less practical, but I'm partial to local wildlife identification because it's fun :D
Someone else already mentioned comms, and I just want to add that this is a very valuable thing. Building a network of trustworthy people in your community and teaching them how to program and use radios would be absolutely life saving in emergency/disastrous situations. Maybe it's the prepper in me, but it's good to prepare for the worst and hope for the best with the current climate.
I'd say a series of basic survival courses that could be broken down by topic:
- First aid/CPR
- How to start a fire without a lighter
- Building shelter
- Wilderness survival
- Methods for obtaining potable water
MLM sales pitches.
MLM
marshmallows
Limes and
Mojitos
? That’s an interesting thing to sell
Brilliant. I'll set up some devil corp calls today!
Financial literacy, primarily how to live within or below your means.
Fantastic idea. I'm always blown away when I see someone learn about a HYSA for the first time!
Thank you for your thoughts. Hope it helps.
What a great question! And neat suggestions. I am saving this thread for inspiration to do something similar :) I might teach some mindfulness, and I think some basic yoga could be really interesting too.
Everything I could a absorb around (cellular) telecommunications or railways (not necessarily just the trains themselves).
Tons of public transport in my city, could be fun!
Transit & infrastructure projects with focus on cycling and micro mobility.
Hell yeah! Great idea :)
Offer what you can offer as an expert, and try to find others in the community with their own skills in a conspicuous way
Be eager to learn and eager to share. I think that's the best way...I think you need to be both upfront that you're going to be doing a lesson, but you can't come off as condescending
How to improvise a variety of explosive devices with household materials so I can DIY a Fourth of July party.
Hmmm.... might have to put this one on the back burner D:
I'm going to caution you to be subtle about this. Appointing yourself teacher is never a great look.
I disagree. Being subtle would make it worse. I would run it more an open ended workshop and clearly label what im teaching. Then people can opt in or out
Yeah...I think the problem is condescension. People hate that
I think being upfront and inviting them to teach on their topics as well is the play
Absolutely, this is the goal. I'm going to run the first few with things ranging from simple "need a new phone? here's what to look for" to "here's how to install Graphene on a pixel and linux on a desktop" to break the ice and build the group. I have no idea how to garden, but judging by all the community gardens in my area I'm sure someone does.
"here's how to install Graphene on a pixel and linux on a desktop" to break the ice and build the group.
I think the "what to look for in a phone" is great, but most people don't even really grasp the concept of an operating system as something different than the hardware, and will respond to the idea of changing it by freaking out.
You have to introduce them to Linux by giving them a machine already running it, which seems difficult in this context
It's also very difficult to get people to understand why they should care about privacy, let alone inconveniencing themselves to achieve it.
You could maybe show them how to use pcpartpicker? You might be able to find one or two people interested in building a new computer, and it kind of demystifies computers a bit.
You could encourage them to change their wifi password and make sure they don't use one password. Maybe talk about scams, things like short links in texts and such
But IDK, I'm in the comic too
Good points. Maybe I'll offer it as an advanced side meeting or something, for those particularly interested. The goal is to help the community and not just a subset, of course :)
I've warned OP now, but this is the kind of thing that will make them seem like they're condescending as hell. Most people don't care about computers, and might sit through a basic security lesson if work forces them to. You're now implying they're stupid and you're so great they should spend time just listening to you, and then the thing you're selling isn't even something they want or even respect.
I don't think that's true... People like learning, but you have to make it fun. It's not condescending at all to give a talk on something you know about, you just have to put in the effort to make it interesting for your audience. A lot of that is prep, and the rest is reading the room
Scams are easy to make people care about, because everyone gets a billion spam calls a day now. There's a fear there, and sharing a few tips to look for is the kind of wives tale factoids that sticks with people
Lots of people are curious about how computers work, but in an idle sort of way. Kind of like space, they like hearing "there's a planet here that rains diamonds", but there's a very limited amount of interest they have in how we discovered it
Security... Well you get to sprinkle in one or two tips before they lose interest
Privacy... Tell them the NSA looks at their dick picks, and we have proof of them sharing them around. That's about the only thing people seem to remotely care about
That's so not my experience. People kind of like a fun fact, and people who actually like learning extensively exist, but most have very different priorities from that. One of the most common ones is ego, which OP might be threatening, and another one is identity, which might be a problem too depending on what OP's neighbors are like.
Fear can work, but it takes a knack for it.
I'm generally likable, but I don't have much charisma -so people listen to me to a certain extent because of that. Past a point, their eyes glaze over
I think there's a reason you have such a different experience. I've found you quite negative in our very short interaction.
I just think you come across as patronizing in general TBH. I mean this genuinely, you lack the puppy dog energy of OP, and you shouldn't expect to get the same results
Yeah, nobody says that about me IRL, that's a bit of a (hurtful) leap from what has been a very short interaction. People find me likeable too, if odd, and I get along pretty well with everyone. Part of that is that I've learned to listen, rather than lecture.
I'm pointing out several downer facts, because OP is being a puppy dog, and it reminds me of shit did when I was younger that I cringe at now. I would have wanted someone to warn me, too.
Technical communication is a skill, not one I'm great at, but one I have to do often. There's a methodology to it. You have to make them care, and then you have a limited amount of interest in the topic that you can't use up. You have to recognize they don't care about computers, only convenience and simple tricks that make them more confident in using them. And yes, you definitely have to listen and adapt to what they're interested in
But yeah, I don't know you at all. I don't really doubt your intentions either, you're probably very nice. It did feel patronizing to have what I think are some pretty well thought out suggestions (grounded in my own experience) dismissed out of hand by a stranger though
If you came to share your experiences and give advice, I'd have responded very differently
Ah, sorry it came off that way. They were good suggestions, but I do question if any of it would matter in this context.
If OP were to work NSA dick picks into a related casual conversation, that may very well make some progress. And maybe someone would ask for alternatives, which could go somewhere closer to what they were originally talking about.
Thanks I appreciate that. I do know that approach works because I've seen it tested, and done it myself
It's definitely a challenge... They just can't understand why privacy matters. But you can squeak in ideas on the fringes. They will never understand why it matters systematically
Just planting ideas, like "say the word and I'll remove all your ads" or "don't buy a pre built desktop, use pcpartpicke and you'll save hundreds of dollars" gives you authority. It's a limited budget, but you can translate it into "avoid this to stay safe*
It's all like that... It extends even into leaders of thee letter agencies, who I didn't realize I was presenting to at the time
Alright, hopefully I'm wrong and it's great. Are you at least older?
Am i older than what?
As opposed to younger. If OP is a collage age or an actual kid this is going to be extra cringe. They remind me of myself at one point.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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