Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 190

@mlg @xj9 I've seen experimental systems that use big piles of biomass (mainly chipped up tree prunings and lawn clippings) to create enough heat from composting reactions to heat water running through a copper pipe (for a hot shower). If you had enough non-mucky biomass, you could try that as both insulation *and* added heat?

@mlg @xj9
OK, so you got me wondering what an "IBC tote" was, so I did a quick web search, about found this article:
http://www.solarcities.eu/education/388

@enkiv2 In both cases, the shows stops being about the complex relationships between the characters, as they respond to the situations the plot puts them in, and ends up being only about the Macguffin ("save the world!" or whatever).

@enkiv2 sounds vaguely similar to the problems with later series of both Heroes and Game of Thrones. Both shows that started out with a large cast of characters, with a wide array of motives and moralities, and end up reduced to a bunch of obvious "good guy" characters fighting a handful of equally obvious "bad guy" characters.

@natecull BTW here's an intro to the concept of the #GreatTurning adapted from the book #ActiveHope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone:
https://www.activehope.info/great-turning.html

@mlg @xj9 hmm, challenging. Most of the community-scale prototypes I've read about or seen were in more balmy climes. Motueka is in one of the more sub-tropical parts of Aotearoa (NZ). There must be a way though. Would making the chamber bigger and rounder give you more thermal mass per surface area?

@natecull I have to say I find myself pretty bored with post-armageddon sci-fi these days. I like solarpunk precisely because, like the original cyberpunks, I'm intrigued by what the future might look like if we successfully navigate the Great Turning (as deep ecologists like Joanna Macy call it). I think drama can be much more interesting when the stakes are something more everyday than the planetary annihilation or species death hype of everything from the Weakling Dead to superhero films.

@natecull that makes sense. #Cyberpunk was in some ways the original #Solarpunk; asking what would happen in the near-future if there wasn't an armageddon (eco, nuclear or otherwide), and current technology continued to develop, albeit in ways shaped by its interaction with flawed humanity.

It's been estimated that FarceBook's current revenue could be replaced by charging each user US$5-10 a month.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/05/what-if-we-paid-for-facebook-instead-of-letting-it-spy-on-us-for-free/

But I suspect that what FB costs to operate and even make a modest surplus is much less than that. One question that intrigues me is this; would a FB-a-like cost more in less to operate, in aggregate, if we replaced it with a federated platform?

Wired editor Chris Anderson wrote a book asking how one can compete with "free"? Let's reframe the question. How do we compete with free *and* amoral? How about by doing cheap and ethical? How about by replacing trustless, dehumanizing "platforms" with a return to human-scale organizations based on bulding trust?

@natecull I suspect you're right. By the time the US came into existence the UK had started to experience the hard realities of the limits of growth. The US, on the other hand, just kept the frontier mentality going by pushing west, then south, then outward via corporate globalization. So they're only just now starting to get the wake-up call the UK got decades ago.

@mlg @xj9 yup, there's a tremendous amount of info on the net about what I call 'community-scale renewable energy' (systems simple enough that you don't need VC to build prototypes at home). Appropedia and Journey to Forever are some of the better archivists of such knowledge. That Akvopedia site is a new one for me, and also looks like a goldmine. Great to see it's under #CC #BY-SA!

@natecull don't forget Survivors, the post-collapse sci-fi TV series written by Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks and Blake's 7. Mad Max didn't come out of nowhere. 2000AD comics were doing whole series following characters who lived after an eco-armageddon (eg Judge Dredd! Also lesser know characters like the ABC Warriors).

@mlg @xj9 for cold climate, wrap it in the same sort of thing you'd use to insulate a hot water cylinder, paint it black, and put it in the sunniest spot you have available. Are you in Aotearoa? There is a small bio-gas generator at a community garden in Motueka. Their design would be worth checking out.

@mlg @xj9 it's probably also worth having a browse through the biofuels library here, there's a whole section of links to articles on bio-gas:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library.html

@xj9 @pony @Technowix
you've got to acknowledge @mlg 's point though. Your average 4-door road vehicle, whatever it's fueled by, is much heavier than it needs to be to transport a human or 3. In China (at least in the regions around Shanghai) they have little 3-wheel electric vehicles with a super-light body. You can transport 2-3 people for not much more energy than 1 person riding an electric moped (which are also super-common here).

@xj9 @mlg on bio-gas see also:
http://www.appropedia.org/Biogas_as_fuel

@skynebula "I can't call these things social networks anymore, I call them behaviour modification empires" - Jaron Lanier

@yiffpolice wait, sorry, I got you confused with Nicky Wire ;-)