#solarpunk and technology

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

If technology wasn’t such a central aspect of solarpunk, we’d all just be hippies redux. Yet not all tech, right? Because solarpunk is also about living the good life while building a just, inclusive, and sustainable society. So, what is solarpunk’s attitude toward and relationship with tech? How do solarpunks decide what’s worth it and what’s beyond the pale? And what’s all this about appropriate technology?

[reasonsforhope]

"Scientists in Singapore have broken a long-standing limitation on the ability to generate electricity from flowing water, suggesting that another elemental force of nature could be leveraged for renewable electricity: rain.

With the simplest and smallest scale test setup, the team could power around 12 LED lightbulbs with simulated rain droplets flowing through a tube, but at scale, their method could generate meaningful amounts that could rival rooftop solar arrays.

Singapore experiences significant rainfall throughout the year, averaging 101 inches (2581 millimeters) of precipitation annually. The idea of generating electricity from such falling water is attractive, but the method has long been constrained by a principle called the Debye Length.

Nevertheless, the concept is possible because of a simple physical principle that charged entities on the surface of materials get nudged when they rub together—as true for water droplets as it is for a balloon rubbed against the hair on one’s head.

While this is true, the power values thus generated have been negligible, and electricity from flowing water has been limited to the driving of turbines in hydropower plants.

However, in a study published in the journal ACS Central Science, a team of physicists has found a way to break through the constraints of water’s Debye Length, and generate power from simulated rain.

“Water that falls through a vertical tube generates a substantial amount of electricity by using a specific pattern of water flow: plug flow,” says Siowling Soh, author of the study. “This plug flow pattern could allow rain energy to be harvested for generating clean and renewable electricity.”

The authors write in their study that in existing tests of the power production from water flows, pumps are always used to drive liquid through the small channels. But the pumps require so much energy to run that outputs are limited to miniscule amounts.

Instead, their setup to harness this plug flow pattern was scandalously simple. No moving parts or mechanisms of any kind were required. A simple plastic tube just 2 millimeters in diameter; a large plastic bottle; a small metallic needle. Water coming out of the bottle ran along the needle and bumped into the top section of the tube that had been cut in half, interrupting the water flow and allowing pockets of air to slide down the tube along with the water.

The air was the key to breaking through the limits set by the Debye Length, and key to the feasibility of electricity generation from water. Wires placed at the top of the tube and in the cup harvested the electricity.

The total generation rate of greater than 10% resulted in about 100 watts per square meter of tube. For context, a 100-watt solar panel can power an appliance as large as a blender or ceiling fan, charge a laptop, provide for several light bulbs, or even a Wi-Fi router.

Because the droplet speeds tested were much slower than rain, the researchers suggest that the real thing would provide even more than their tests, which were of course on a microscale."

-via Good News Network, April 30, 2025

[xanderisrotting]

You CAN be eco friendly with tech!!

Use energy saver mode

Dont keep your pc and chargers plugged in when not in use. Better yet, get outlets that can switch off.

Buy energy efficient products

Replace parts instead of scrapping the whole product, and when it is beyond repair, recycle or sell for parts

Replace your phone battery instead of buying a new phone

Buy used/refurbished. They’re just as good as new, but youre not contributing to more demand

Try to buy local

Buy sustainably sourced accessories or ones that can be easily composted or properly disposed of

Use Ecosia to plant trees while you search

Use wildhero to plant trees with your email

Limit AI usage

[thoughtportal]

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I really hope they can work the bugs out of this solution, because if it's done right, it'll really be a win-win situation. Less evaporation of water, and solar power being generated every day? Yes, please. We are smart, resourceful beings, and this is far from the most difficult problem we've had to address.

This is also a great example of how we can go back and fix mistakes of the past. We very, very rarely ever come up with technological solutions that take long-term effects on the environment into consideration, and so the way many things are designed often leads to some sort of damage, whether through manufacture, use, disposal, or all of the above. Retrofitting canals (which have been used in agriculture for thousands of years) will have benefits not only in the ways mentioned above, but also gets people thinking more about the impacts we make.

I'm hoping that this will lead to more new technology being developed in ways that already anticipate and account for negative impacts so that they avoid them in the first place, rather than having to engineer new solution many years down the line.

[thehmn]

I don’t think I ever feel more like I’m living in the future than when I’m walking my dogs across some grass in my neighborhood and one of the robot lawnmowers owned by our housing association rolls by and we have to sidestep a bit to avoid it but the dogs mostly ignore it and we continue on our way.

I was born well before the internet and smartphones but there’s just something about seeing a little machine roughly the size of my dogs so perfectly part of the landscape that animals aren’t even afraid of it. They’re so sensitive to touch now I’ve seen it bump into a hedgehog and stop.

Of all our innovations it was a little robot buzzing around in the grass that got me.

[pendulouspuppyudders]

if you want to see actually good solarpunk aesthetics you should rly look for the people mixing it with afrofuturism that shit is amazing and doesn't usually hold the same "uwu perfectworld cottagecore" bs that more mainstream solarpunk art tends towards

[peacebone]

[zadokthepriest]

from Mac Baconai

[reportsofagrandfuture]

Fully fuel-free solar oven

[alpaca-clouds]

Poll: Solarpunk Topics to Write More About

So, I have decided to go back into blogging a bit more about Solarpunk - both as a genre and as a movement. But I now gotta ask you: What kinda Solarpunk stuff would you like to read more about in this blog?

[its-a-crazy-world-aintit]

Something that has been on my mind lately: revolution.

What does that really look like?

How does that work right now?

I blame my current media consumption. Rewatching Andor. Rereading the hunger games and reading its subsequent prequels. Rewatching Anon. Binging Leverage and Person of Interest. Hunting down old copies of Uglies and Maximum Ride. Rewatching Equilibrium. Going through old research for cyberpunk and solarpunk worlds I built for me.

I feel a huge dissatisfaction with the world. While not as extreme as the dystopian worlds above, so many tiny injustices piling up. A 50 hour work week just to make ends meet. Pausing a movie to catch a detail but only seeing an ad. Watching multiple sources pull different details out of context to highlight their narrative. A new system at work to “maximize oversight”. Another company mining my data.

And unlike most of the dystopias, there is no one tyrannical entity behind it all. A single place to focus my fury. It’s not just an Evil Corporation out to make maximum profits. It’s not a Totalitarian Government determined to control a populous.

It is multiple corporations trying to make a profit. It is different factions of government all trying to get their agenda pushed. It is all these different companies and parties and individuals scrambling for power and control and safety.

I just want to run away from it all.

When I was younger, I wanted the power to change the world. I wanted to be the Chosen One; to defeat a Great Evil and stop all the wrongs. I sought out ways to increase my power and influence, sure I would use them for the good and safety of everyone.

Which is exactly how you become the Great Evil that must be defeated.

Now I just want enough money and enough power to be left alone. Enough influence to get the things I need.

I see no way to achieve this in the world I currently live in. I want the powers that be to leave me alone. Yet in their version of the world, that is a threat. Anyone or anything outside of their sphere of influence, outside of their grasp, is a danger to the systems that currently hold our world in place.

There’s no one place to concentrate the fight, to rebel against. So many people say pick one thing and fight that. But there are too many things I care deeply for. Too many injustices to push back against. But that just plays into their hands. They want me hopeless. They want me overwhelmed. They want me to be apathetic and inactive.

I just need to find a way forward.

I’ll let you know when I find it.

[greenteaandtattoos]

I think solarpunk is a future we are capable of accomplishing, but are stuck because people see nature and technology as direct and moral opposites, instead of forces that could be used together to grow and advance the other, and us.

[dailyanarchistposts]

SAFETY AS ILLUSION- DANGER AS FRACTURE

1. Connected to the maintenance of life as living death is the second promise of the walls of civilization, the promise of safety.

2. Safety is always illusionary, as the countless attentats, and ever changing airport security protocols reveal- yet its impositions are very solid. Take the traditional wall around a town or settlement (which offers the promise of 'protection from the outside threat- the barbarian); the wall can be undermined, scaled, even broken to pieces if one has time and motivation, it crumbles with age and without constant maintenance and can be bypassed simply by seducing the one who guards it. Yet, to the individual inside the wall, the towering mass of bricks seems both impenetrable and inescapable, and represents a very material disconnect from that which is outside (one cannot for example even see what is outside the walls).

3. Thus the illusion of safety, is stripped bare, not as a form of protection, but as a form of containment; only those who live inside the walls can be convinced of safeties impenetrability- anyone with will enough to exist beyond the walls can see the paper tiger for what it really is- a trap to prevent escape and not a defense against entry.

4. Todays walls are much more diffuse; produced on and in the psychic level in the schools and social relations, the walls are built up inside the minds of individuals who for so many generations have lived inside of them and now no longer need not to see the outside in order to be afraid of it.

5. The illusion of safety has permeated every aspect of daily life, what 'safety' means is never concretely defined; aside from the columns of foot-soldiers patrolling the streets and CCTV at every corner, there is no discursive definition of what it might mean to be 'safe' and no concrete description of what the danger really is.

6. Even radical milieus have adopted these logics, with demands for 'safe space', policies defining safety, and the imagining that one can create places or communities free from the 'dangers' of the outside world.

7. Safety is always premised in imaginary dangers- usually the dangers of the outside, the 'other', or most often mortality. In the name of being kept alive any number of repressive measures become normalized.

8. To assist or allow suicide is still illegal in most of the world[4], the cages of the mental hospitals and prisons are filled with individuals who present a 'danger' to the life of themselves or others.

9. The demand for safety, always walks hand in hand with the forces of domination. Be that tradition of Radical Feminism which demanded 'safer streets' for women against masked and racialized attackers (and resulted in huge police incursions into poor and racialized communities), or the push by LGBT charities for hate crime legislation to protect individuals from street harassment/harm (and which has been used as a 'catchall legislation' that sees vast increases in incarceration and penal punishments for as little as saying 'fuck' in a public space).[5]

10. A fitting example of the anthropocentric obsession with safety is the 'house cat'; a being for whom the entirety of its existence is passed within the confined walls of an apartment. Premised on the idea that the dangers of the outside world; getting lost, starving to death, being run over by a car- are so terrifying (from the human captors point of view) as to justify the ultimate cruelty and curtailment of freedom. The cat is kept entirely 'safe', in a sterile environment which cannot harm her; and yet can one say honestly that a being for whom long nights, restless hunts, a shrugging disregard for humanity are normal character traits- the four walls of a human made prison will bring her happiness?

11. The 'house cat' also serves as fitting analogy for our own lives- the masters of domination keep us safely contained in the cities, the workplace, the homes; and we may wriggle a little, excited by the promise of the gym or the swimming pool- but to go outside, truly outside of their world is not only forbidden but now impossible. We welcome the crushing wheels of the car or the neighbors dog to carry us away- danger signifies freedom.

12. Individuals oscillate between captor and captive as they internalize and reproduce the logic of safety. From the cop on the street corner, to the parent warning its children of the dangers of pedophiles, to the liberal queer askewing violent or confrontational action and enforcing passivity in the name of 'inclusivity'.

13. Individuals of this epoch must face the fact that nowhere is 'safe', and that anyone promising to provide safety is in fact only (re)producing captivity.

14. When entangled with the enforcers of safety- (the police or their representatives) one soon becomes aware, that the illusion of safety is not some absolute safety from harm, but some imagined parameter of safety defined by the apparatchiks and algorithms of domination.

15. When falling fowl of the enforces of safety, one quickly realities that their version of 'keeping you safe' in fact means keeping you under control, or more often saving you from imagined danger so that they can inflict their own very real harm upon you.

16. One can for example be stopped for driving the car too fast, for passing a red light too early, for trying to jump from a bridge, for exploring and abandoned warehouse, or for engaging in a physical confrontation, in all the examples the behavior will first been defined as 'dangerous' and the narrative usually follows "we are here to protect you". Naturally the moment one is in the hands of those enforcers of safety, she can expect to be beaten, tortured, confined in a cage, sexually assaulted, humiliated, bullied and harmed in any myriad of unnameable ways.

17. "Keeping you safe" is synonymous with maintaining the monopoly of danger, harm and violence.

18. It benefits domination to have as many imaginary dangers as possible at play in any given moment. The more, and scarier the dangers, the greater the playground for imagining ways to ensure 'safety'.

19. The ever increasing number of dangers which the civilized order is happy to integrate into its logic- be that the threat of terrorism, ecological disaster, petty crime, homophobia, gendered violence or racism justifies an ever increasing number of punishments, containments and cages.

20. In many 'liberal democracies' we see how the response to popular awareness of structural oppression has been to criminalize any individuals who are accused of perpetuating it (ignoring the reality that the state is always the biggest perpetrator). From hate crime legislation protecting 'oppressed minorities' to attempts to ban networks like tor (because thats where terrorists live) we see time and time again that the promise to keep us free from danger, warped into the very real application of harm.

21. The illusion of safety rests on a very fluid understanding or what and who represent danger. In the logic of domination, we are presented daily with the idea, that a heavily armed gang, enshrined with the right to murder, kidnap, rape, and torture (the police) are 'safe' and that some kid running a red light or walking whilst black represents danger.

22. This is further complicated by status's awarded to individuals based on presumed compliance/non compliance- the refugee is 'safe' the illegal immigrant is dangerous, the steel worker is 'safe' the sex worker is dangerous, the law abiding citizen is 'safe' the criminal is dangerous. The arbitrary awarding of the right to safety is in fact the real danger.

23. Such arbitrary awarding, mean that In the name of safety we have armed hooligans patrolling the streets with assault rifles- and one can go to jail for carrying a kitchen knife from store to homestead.

24. Anyone who believes, we are safe inside the walls is delusional at best and more likely suicidal.

25. Some 'good citizens' (white, rich, cis, hetro, law abiding) might be able to uphold the lie that they are safe inside the walls (even if they discount the toxic fumes and radio waves slowly annihilating them); but even they will be forced to admit their mistake when in the name of 'safety' they cannot leave their home cage except to go their (re)productive one.

26. More than all of this though, why do we need to be safe? Why have we allowed a fear of danger to incubate inside our minds and proliferate in our praxis? Do we even really know what we mean when we say we want to be safe? We are trapped in illusions curated by tyrants.

27. Safety might be illusionary, but danger can be very real. Not the imaginary dangers domination feeds its subjects in order to keep them servile- but the danger which domination itself lives in constant fear of.

28. To break from captivity, is to accept danger into ones life- not the false dangers which preclude safety; but the real dangers of active confrontation with those who claim to provide it (safety). Accepting real danger, means arming conflictuality against the state, the police, technology, pacifistic ideologues, and perhaps even oneself- it is the realization that even if nothing is worth dying/going to jail for, these possibilities are perhaps less terrifying than remaining safe (i.e. captive).

29. To perpetuate the illusion of safety, into every aspect of life is always the goal of domination, every time one arms conflictuality, imbues danger, creates fracture; safety will rush to plug the breach. Just as one has almost no chance of destroying civilization, there is little hope of destroying safety in its totality; one can chip away, and expand ruptures but one must always be prepared that the ruptures will create new forms, and enforcements of safety- the battle will be an endless one.

30. The fight against safety in and of itself, creates danger for the one who pursues it.

31. If one is to truly realize the illusion of safety, and from this realization act in order to destroy it; she must first welcome danger as a constant friend and companion.

32. Through the process of becoming dangerous, she must face the very real dangers inside the walls (repression, assault, murder), and open her heart to all the possible imaginary ones outside of them.

33. Domination will be at every door when one opens herself fully to danger. It will close tight ranks all around and try to force safety at any cost on the one who seeks it.

34. Danger must embody all the fear of the unknown, all the visceral terror of the lands outside the walls, it must plunge deep into the darkness and never shine a light.

35. If danger spreads, 'safety' will wither.

[jellyfilledeyes]

I'm just gonna say it solarpunk is cooler than cyberpunk