Here's My (probably Only, Sadly) Post For Solarpunk Aesthetic Week! Originally Made For Andrewism's 2023

Here's my (probably only, sadly) post for Solarpunk Aesthetic Week! Originally made for Andrewism's 2023 Solarpunk Art Collab!

This digital painting depicts the Southern Great Lakes Ecoregion, within the Interior Plateau & Southern Great Lakes Forests Bioregion, within the Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forest Biome.

I chose a suburban setting for this piece because I've not yet seen a Solarpunk artwork that features this. I'm aware of the problems with the suburbs, but it seems to me more sustainable to try to adapt them than to demolish them and start over. So instead of lawns I've depicted beds of native Indiana plants, including but not limited to:

Amsonia Tabernaemontana (Eastern Bluestar)

Spartina Pectinata (Prairie Cordgrass)

Echinacea Purpurea (Purple  Coneflower.

The roofs of the houses are either white to help reflect heat, or green roofs. Some of the houses are equipped with solar panels on the south sides, and one is shown with a greenhouse on that side as well.

While perhaps not explicitly ecologically focused, I have shown there to be more art in this setting than is usually found in american suburbia. The sidewalk has a mural painted with hydrochromic paint, which only appears while it is raining. The houses are painted bright colors (white or greige is  considered  'Normal' ) and are occasionally decorated with murals.

This particular area is among the cloudiest in the so-called U.S.A. To reflect that, the weather is overcast and it is currently raining.

Hope y'all enjoy this, and Happy Solarpunk Aesthetic Week!

Trans men and women tend to get viewed as either disgusting male freaks or perfect feminine female goddesses based entirely on identity and vibes alone, forcing trans men to either detranstion to talk about the issues faced, or shut up and hate themselves and grovel at the feet of their "betters", and trans women are forced to preform the highest standards of femininity or be shunned and live in fear of being cast out and not being "woman enough" facing the constant need to prove themselves to avoid being seen as interlopers. these things are similar, these problems overlap, and yet people go on to pretend that one is the most victimized victim and the other is the "subjector and oppressor" (Interchangeable) and neither can truly understand the other. these ideas being perpetuated by others within and outside of these groups. It drives me up the wall that there are people pretending this helps anyone, that either benefits from the others oppression in anyway. Personally, from what I've seen a lot of it comes out as like gender insecurity, from the inside groups, which is pretty sad, but also extremely frustrating to be lashed out at for being unwilling to accept this gender essentialist false binary

Mark Vomit (2020)

I need people to stop buying into the idea that "small business" = "ethical business." Many small businesses are wonderful, and absolutely deserve your support, but plenty others aren't. If you're genuinely concerned about where you spend your money, you have to do your due diligence even if a business isn't a mega-corporation.

The lady who owned the small business I used to work at was horrible to work for, gave free coffee to cops, treated us all like shit, and got pissed if you didn't worship the ground she walked on for giving you a job. I would never work for her again, and if someone asked me if they should apply to work for her, I'd tell them to run for the fucking hills. The turnover rate was atrocious when I worked there, and I wouldn't be surprised if she still burns through employees at an unholy rate.

Small businesses are just as capable of worker abuse as big businesses, and they frequently get away with it because people refuse to believe that their beloved Mom & Pop Shop is run by rancid assholes who think Jeff Bezos has the right idea about how to run a business.

Small business owners CAN be better! They CAN be pro-worker and pro-union! But it's not inherent, and small business owners can be some of the most abusive pieces of shit you've met in your life.

This week I went back to visit the discussion in the notes on @seaweed-solarpunk’s post on solarpunk fashion. I collected all the suggestions in reblogs and tags and tried to find common themes to organize into a concept map. This is just my interpretation, but I think the three most important tenets of solarpunk fashion are eco-friendliness, inclusive design, and personal significance.

[image ID: a colorful branching concept map where the central idea is Solarpunk Fashion, and the three main branches are in primary colors. Where the branches connect and overlap, the color changes to a secondary color between the primaries. All text in the bubbles is listed in the text to follow. End ID]

Eco-Friendly

• Local sourcing

• Biodegradable textiles

• Durable

• Closed-loop production

• Biomimicry

- Integrated biotechnology

- Upcycled electronics

• Heirlooms and Secondhand

- Thrifted

- Hand-me-downs

- Dumpster-dived

- Clothing swaps

Inclusive Design

• Body-type inclusivity

• Accessibility

- Decorated disability aids

- Physical comfort (including for those with sensory issues)

Personal Significance

• Radical authenticity

- Genderfuckery

- Rejection of mega-corporations

• Handmade/modified

- Small practices

- DIY

- Visibly mended

• Culture

- Religious symbols

- Pride flags

- Traditional dress

I’d love to hear what the solarpunk community here thinks of this framework, what you’d keep, remove, or change.

So I work with a lot of thermoplastic (I don't have a 3d printer yet, I use a heat gun and pellets) and I want everyone who's on the plastic hate train to know and understand a bit o' nuance.

Thermoplastics are generally extremely reusable and recyclable. The thermo plastic I work with is Techleo poly morph and it comes in meltable pellet form, but 3D printing filament uses a similar substance in the thermoplastics family. Other thermoplastic materials include: Worbla products, Polly plastics, and Instamorph.

There's a chemistry part of this I won't bore you with, but the lower the melt temp, usually the weaker the plastic. Worbla requires a higher temp than polymorph for instance. Cold, cured polymorph is softer and more scratchable, where as Worbla isn't.

Anyway-

Please stop getting mad at people with 3D printers because the waste from these printers is absolutely reusable and more importantly: it's easy for a layman to recycle and reuse a thermoplastic at home, now more than ever because of the rise of 3D printers.

Having a recycling plan if you own a 3D printer is a better message to rally behind. Use your 3D printer to recycle what companies won't. Buy recycled filament, create a demand for recycling.

3d printing brings recycling right into your home. Look up how to process bottles into filament and you'll see what I mean. You could make homewares out of your trash easily with just a few extra steps before the print process. A bottle that was cut into a continuous strip, melted into filament and then printed into a knick knack for your shelf is a bottle not in the ocean.

Recycling plastic has now become waaaay more accessible to regular people because of 3d printers. It changes the attitude people have towards recycling as a whole too.

Environmental conversation when it comes to plastic is not entirely an individual responsibility thing as we know and 3d printers are not an enemy. We are having so many more conversations about how to recycle plastic and I know 3d printers are teaching regular people about plastic production and that sets us up with an expectation that companies can do better about waste so they should.

Plastic isn't going away. It is unfortunately a curse of an extremely useful substance with no comparable alternative. Don't hate on plastic indiscriminately, hate on plastic that is not used to its fullest potential. Demand systems of recycling that make sense. Heck, bacteria that can break down plastic is the future right now so maybe artists that create beautiful things with plastic aren't your enemy