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Crystal clear water in Venice was seen flowing for the first time due to a drastic decrease in pollution because of the Nationwide Coronavirus quarantine that was enacted in Italy.

Never in the last 60 years has water been seen so clear and beautiful.

... And from the chaos that seems to be happening, there flowed beauty.

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20170910 by Yulin Li

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Héctor Sanz DOrs

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The mushroom was picked. It bruised into an indigo color which was promising to him for his shamanic ritual. Snake pinched it delicately, tasted a drip and his tongue went a bit numb

“Maybe this isn’t it,” he thought.

He felt his mouth a bit strange but shrugged it off as it didn’t reduce his tracheal diameter. He put the little strange fungus in a small wicker basket to study later. He proceeded to stand and then lidded the basket.

He looked up and around him. The heavy fog dissolved the environs around him enough for the deep colors of the earth, trees and grasses to erase away in the grey. It was silent. A sense of subtle eerieness came to his awareness, so he took a deep breath and observed the sensation as a sign to move on. He kept on the trail he had found for a few more minutes touching and smelling certain bush here or there. He went on a piss off the trail and found some berries on the bush that now hosted the droplets of his steamy urine. He hadn’t seen these fruits before. He picked a plump, purple berry and rubbed it deep into his neck, its juices burst on the tense, cool skin. A violet-colored liquid dripped over his clavicle, down his chest. He marked his rough position on the map and made a mental note to come back later. Just before stepping away, he took care to observe the serration of the leaves. Regular. The leaves hosted a diamond shape with a whorled arrangement on the stem. The bottom of these leaves had a silvery color with a soft, velvety texture, and an aromatic, minty smell. It reminded him of a nettle, but it held berries and no stinging sensation was felt by touching any part of the plant. It was a promising find... he took a nice stem and placed it in an absorption book of plants he had collected on his hike. It was bonded with hemp rope and a stiff sort of burlap made from hemp pulp. He snorted as he raised his now damp knees from the soil and walked back to his lab.

Coprinus comatus, Shaggy Mane. Researches on fungi. 1958.

Internet Archive

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Botanical apartments in Phuket Thailand

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The opium facility was enormous.

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People often joke about “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” however we already have the technology required to produce one of the most foundational elements - Fully Automated Vertical Farming. 

Agriculture is not simply “A Means of Production” but possibly the single most important means of production in existence. An immediate structured transfer toward vertical farming would have the following effects.

1 - An immediate reduction in land requirement for plant growth, allowing for massive rewilding projects across the world.  2 - A subsequent reduction in pesticide reliance, allowing for critical insect populations such as bees to begin repopulating and a reduction of soil toxicity.  3 - An end to exploitive “under-the-table” work practices which pay children and immigrants significantly less than minimum wage.  4 - A real solution to ending the phenomena of food deserts which primary affect impoverished and minority neighborhoods. 5 - A subsequent reduction in health problems relating to malnourishment and reliance upon fast food.  6 - A real way for the veg*n community to directly address the problems of inaccessibility of plant-based diets. (Imagine the potential for volunteer veggie kitchens which provide premade nutritious meals with local ingredients for the local in-need population.) These are just some of the positive benefits that could come from vertical farming. Obviously I haven’t even begun to touch on other subjects like the amount of jobs which could be created simply for creating the structures. 

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Solarpunk Resource Library Dump

Some useful free literature:

Social Ecology and Communalism by Murray Bookchin

Remaking Society by Murray Bookchin

The Philosophy of Social Ecology by Murray Bookchin

Cities Against Centralization by Greg Bryant

Democratic Confederalism by Abdullah Öcalan

The Conquest of Bread by Pëtr Kropotkin

Basic Bakunin by The Anarchist Federation (a critique & basic introduction)

Your Rights at Work by the Industrial Workers of the World

Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

Decentralised Open-source Social Media Platforms:

PixelFed - a user run copy of instagram

WriteFreely - a user run blogging platform

Mastodon Instances - community run social media, blend of tumblr and twitter:

- witches community

- solarpunk co-op run community

- general instance

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After long arduous days in the forest, the lonely woman trudged along, her swollen feet were lightened by the crisp air and the dirt on her brow was cleansed by the cool weather of the forest. A calming breeze washed over her as she looked out on the horizon, her lungs filled in a deep breath. The search had not been completely futile for she found solace within these neatly arranged inanimate organisms.

Were these objects so inanimate after all? She thought. Or, is it a matter of perspective as to what is inanimate? What kind of scale or perspective must you perceive in order to call a mountain inanimate? The mantle and crust of earth is the birthplace. In a timescale so immense that human beings are only able to imagine, but never directly observe save a few violent movements which provide the earthshattering proof of their existential, individual irrelevance and fragility. The mountain grows in size and changes shape, it grows trees, it is covered in moss, rocks, grasses, shrubs; it pours water from itself and feeds the valleys with the degradation of its minerals and mass. It shrinks as the earth finds new points of contact and friction. Trees? Trees are much easier to comprehend. They are our gate to the 4th dimension. They exist complete; everywhere that tree has been is observed in one neat root and branch system. It grows, it reproduces, it breathes and shifts with its own borrowed and created energy. The movements are minute, but it somehow reaches the height of a building. It is animate, pressure along the trunk moves nutrients and signals to the rest of the organism to respond appropriately to the external conditions of its world. Does it know it rests on top of a mountain? It does not. And neither are we humans so constantly aware in all our tiny interactions that we rest upon a globe, in a solar system of a branch of a galaxy in a flowing local group in one of the multidimensional corners of the universe.

Kawase Hasui (Japanese, 1883-1957) - Samburam Rock, Kumgang Mountain, 1939

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A wound

“I’m going to die soon.” He thought.

“All this effort and this pain brought me here, I’ll end up dying of hypothermia. My blood loss is too high. The microchip in my right temple was smashed … the command center cannot help me.”

Typhoon warnings made people cower in fear behind their thick shutters. He kept on walking until he knelt down in a flooding alley. Under his thick robes, he took a moment to look at his tender wound. “Not good, not good.” He closed his eyes in resignation and fell asleep for the last time.

All he could hear was his heavy rattled breathing, he saw nothing. It was unpleasant, but comforting. his face kept being kissed by the drops of clean water that hit the dirty city, his dirty face. He kept breathing, and he kept feeling lighter and lighter, the sounds around him became muffled. His ass sank into the wet soil, it enveloped him, the water was cool, soothing and relieved the weight of his wound. Grasses pushed against his drooping body. He sank deeper and deeper. he could now only hear the sound of droplets on his body, the water trembling on the edge of his nose, like his soul, with every breath. A grimacing grin overtook his face. It was the most peace he had experienced in a long time.

This moment, it brought him back to that root of that tree in that park in the cold night where his thoughts echoed inside his mind, cold face, warm body. Fading. That moment brought him back to being held by his wife and child in his home, in the summer, before all of it happened, before he grew resentful, dissatisfied and confused. It took him back to holding the first life he’d ever witnessed as a continuation of his own, his first and only hope. Holding the warm helpless creature in his arms. That moment, it took him back to being held by his mother, when she read him stories and they were warm under his blanket, when he hurt himself and she held him. All the way onto those misty, foggy years before his ego took over, before he made himself, before he knew the meaning of suffering, loss and grief.

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She found herself walking up the wide steps. Mosses, lichen and vines grew upon them. The year is 2093 and it is Kobe Japan. Many people have moved away from this area and a few poor remain. There are many abandoned archives here. Many have rotted with the humidity. Few servers have survived. She is searching for the 5DHD that houses a library of knowledge. It is unknown if they will house too many copies to be of worth as the past 3 have been replicas, but maybe this ones different.

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HGU-55 Helmet with EEU-2/P Nuclear Flash Protection Goggles