JacobCoffinWrites

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/1997731

The second photobash in what I hope will be a series; a bit larger and more visually interesting than the first. I've started thinking of these as 'postcards from a solarpunk future.’ They might not show the width and breadth of this world, but nice scenes of what this fictional solarpunk society would consider aspirational, or values worth showing off.

I feel that for a genre/movement with such a focus on intentionality, there's a lot of AI art setting the tone online, along with a tendency to accept anything that looks partway futuristic and green, even if it's a massive cityscape or sort of generically utopian. I want to try to pull the visual aspect towards a more lived-in, human future that sets out to show possibilities/options.

My goals for this one were pretty simple: I wanted to show a setting where cars are no longer the priority, and to show that a solarpunk society will embrace new technology and infrastructure where it's a good use of limited resources (in contrast to the focus on reusing what’s here that I'm trying to include in other images). I also wanted to show that there’s room for more than one solution (and more than one kind of lifestyle) as with the bicyclist towing a kind of traditional-looking wagon.

As with the other photobashes, there are ruins in this scene. One of my overarching goals is to keep these pictures from looking utopian or like some kind of scratch-built future. Things will be messy, resources will be scarce, and tasks will go undone. As in our world, the debris of abandoned projects will pile up around human society, no matter how good its intentions are. I’m pessimistic enough to see bad times ahead, but I want to emphasize in these that that doesn’t mean giving up. For me, that’s a big part of the appeal of solarpunk, that the people in it keep working to mitigate the damage at any level they can access, and will try to rebuild more deliberately, carefully when they can. So these scenes are a little postapoclyptic, with hopefully a more inclusive, vibrant, and colorful society on the other side.

My neighbor recently asked me for recommendations for veggieburgers, and my SO and I started writing up this list and I thought I'd share it here, hope that's okay. It's a bit more commercial than a lot of the stuff I post here, but meat substitutions are honestly the easiest way I've found to get friends and relatives to try vegetarian stuff. It's easy to cook, guilt free, and with any luck, at least some of these options fit easily into their existing routine. From conservative relatives to friends on camping trips, we've gotten good results with these.

By it's nature, this list will be tailored to American brands accessible in my geographic reach. If you have any recommendations of your own, I'd love it if you shared them.

Hamburger:

• Impossible/Beyond Burger for closest fit to the real thing. They're even better if you pour a little worcestershire sauce (turns out this has anchovies in it whoops) on them
• Trader Joe's Quinoa Cowboy Veggie Burger - really good breaded veggieburger. Crisp them up so they don't fall apart, good with pickles and cheese. Personal favorite, try seasoning them like you would chili. 
• Trader Joe's Veggie Masala Burger - good basic bean burger. 

Chicken:

• Quorn's Meatless Homestyle ChiQin Cutlets are like chicken breasts, good on their own or chopped up in sandwiches, stir fry, pasta, or soup
• Quorn makes a breaded, cheese-and-pesto-stuffed version which is awesome on its own, sort of like the premade Stuffed Chicken Cordon Bleu from the freezer section.
• edit: Daring. Plant Chicken Pieces

Nugs (you really can't go wrong here, they're all good):

• Morningstar Farms Vegan Chicken Nuggets (regular and buffalo): closest I think to the real freezer-section thing (minus the gristly bits) and probably the cheapest 
• Impossible Chicken Nuggets - also very close, sometimes more expensive 
• Trader Joe's Chickenless Crispy Tenders - a little bit their own thing but very good
• Gardein Breaded Turk'y Cutlets - my personal favorite. These are a bit small so I'm counting them as nugs

Bacon:

• Morningstar Veggie Bacon Strips, it's not super close but it's a similar experience, a little easy to burn if you like it crispy

Deli meats:

• Tofurky brand Hickory Smoked Deli Slices

Sausage: 

• Morningstar Breakfast sausages - good in breakfast sandwiches, omelets, rice, or just on the side
• Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo - this is awesome in all kinds of stuff, including soups, rice, pasta, and fauxganoff
• Field Roast Classic Recipe Plant Based Sausage Breakfast Patties - great in soups and rice dishes, especially spicy ones
• Impossible Sausage - these are apparently the closest fit to grilling sausages though I haven't tried them yet

Steak:

• Trader Joe's Beefless Bulgogi - This stuff cooks up more or less like steak tips and goes great in stir fry, and especially in soup, where it even holds its shape and texture and lends a nice flavor

Turkey (Thanksgiving style):

• Quorn Meatless Turkey-Style Roast - my SOs recommendation 
• Trader Joe's Breaded Turkey-less Stuffed Roast - my recommendation 

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/1581214

I posted this to zerowaste since it's all made of old lumber I found on trash day or got from my local Everything is Free page, but I know the DIY community is a bit more active so I thought I'd share it here too. If you like this sort of thing, I've got more posted over there.

There are bats living around my parent's house. I wanted to build them a house of their own. They seem to like the barn - we think the scratches on the wall below the eaves might be from bats landing and climbing their way up into shelter. They only seem to exist below the eaves, so I'm hoping that's a good sign that they'll notice their new house quickly.

If you've seen my other posts here, you'll know I try to make everything I build out of old materials, stuff I find on trash day, pull from construction debris, or get from my local Everything is Free page, so that was part of the challenge of building this one. I pretty much managed it - the only thing I bought new was the caulking I used to seal the joints, everything else, wood, stains, screws, bituthene, etc was all old stuff.

I started with a kind of motley collection of materials but I like the challenge of finding secondhand stuff that'll work. On the uphand, I didn't have to cut up bigger lumber just to make the spacers, they were all small scraps from other projects. I don't remember where I got the nice piece of half-inch cabinet plywood. The 3/8" plywood came from a fellow I met through Everything is Free, and the pine boards were found on trash day.

I followed this guide from the state of Massachusetts as closely as I could since we're in a similar region, though I had to make it slightly narrower than the specified 17.5 inches because of the dimensions of the 1/2" plywood. I also made the roof slightly wider, because the board was already that length and it seemed like it would offer additional protection, so no need to shorten it.

We had access to a laser cutter through a local makerspace, so my SO and I decided to burn a paisley pattern into the smaller panels just as a quick flourish. I'm actually very pleased with how that little detail looked on the finished version, and it's something I'll play with in future furniture building projects. The sides were slightly longer than the laser cutter's working space, so I had to carve a little of the pattern by hand, but once it was stained they blended in pretty well.

The instructions tell you to cut groves into the interior surfaces to make it easier for the bats to climb. For most of them I did regular horizontal lines, 1/4" to 1/2" apart, but I got bored a couple times and cut climbable murals instead. I tried to emphasize lots of horizontal handholds, and I made sure that each compartment got at least one regular 'ladder' too. Given that they seem to already be climbing the wooden siding of the barn, I think they'll still find this pretty usable.

The instructions all said to stain it with water based stain so the fumes/smell wouldn't bother the bats. I did all the interior surfaces with a can of expresso water-based stain and the outside surfaces with two coats of oil-based stain for improved water resistance (and because I ran out of the water-based stuff). I left all the panels leaning upright on our porch for several weeks so they could offgas with good ventilation, prior to assembly. All the stains came from Everything is Free.

I decided to stain the paisley panels with red mahogany stain and the rest with two coats of ebony to give them a little more contrast. This left the roof and front stained black for maximum sun-warming. On the front paisley panel, which had a frame around the pattern, I did my best to do the inside in red and the frame in black, to match the sides. It was all pretty much hidden by the very distinct grain that piece of plywood happened to have. A prestain might have helped, though I mostly wish I'd had more of the cabinet plywood I used for the upper front and back.

I started assembly by attaching the back to the sides, and started that by caulking the joint. The silicone caulking was the only thing I bought new for this project. I could probably have kept asking around until I found some, but I settled for giving the rest of the tube away on Everything is Free because I didn't think I'd use it for anything before it expired. The directions emphasized that you really want a good seal everywhere except the specified vents, because the bats need to be warm and dry, so I made sure to seal all the exterior joints well.

Once it was all assembled, I added a coat of oil-based urethane to the top and sides of the roof to help with water resistance. If it warped, that could allow drafts and additional moisture intrusion. I also added little bits of trim to the sides under the roof, after sealing that joint a second time.

We hung it partly using some metal strips my dad had from past projects, for attaching chimneys to the roofing around them. They were galvanized and a kind of corrugated pattern. I found two sets of two where the existing holes lined up, and drilled two new ones in each set so they all had four. Then I painted them and attached them to the back.

Another relative provided a scrap of bituthene which we stuck/stapled to the roof for additional waterproofing.

Once it was ready, I pushed it to the top of a tall ladder leveled it against the wall, and put two screws through each metal bracket, then two screws through the landing strip at the bottom, and two toenailed in through the vents on the sides. I'm told that was overkill but I really didn't want any bats we housed to fall off the wall someday. At this point, if it goes, it'll take the siding with it.

Awhile ago I was watching a let's play(?) Podcast(?) using the Aliens tabletop game system. During one of the sessions, the players and GM joked about a keyboard being in Fly Agaric, like it was the Dvorak keyboard from hell you'd have to sit and really think hard to remember how to use. Wanting to know what they were talking about, I stumbled into this typography blog which did explain the history of that keyboard prop, but also goes into detail on any prop with text on it, some subtle foreshadowing, and even some translation issues that might be plot-relevant. It also talks about references to other films and ways Alien influenced scifi movies that came later.

Talking about Space Sweepers recently got me thinking about Alien/Aliens props and that reminded me of this. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

By the way, which Alien stuff do you consider cannon? There's enough of it that most people I've talked to seem to pick and choose. Personally I go: Alien, Aliens, Alien Isolation, then these two tabletop podcast/video series.

I'm new to this community but I know we're still trying to work out the kind of content we want here. I really like discussions of cyberpunk settings, technologies, and their implications so I thought I'd submit my recommendation for a(n unfortunately less-well-known) story that has a lot of that. (I've got a few other recommendations if anyone wants to hear them.)

I'm biased here because I'm already a fan of the author, who passed away last year, but it's really, really good and I wanted to recommend it.

The Other Kind of Life is a cyberpunk noir detective story. It's thoughtful, well-built, and it never cheats the audience out of seeing how the protagonist pulls something off. The story and setting are cohesive, take no shortcuts, and build a very distinct world.

The elevator pitch about a con artist solving robot murders sounds pretty trite in summary, so I'll give you the cool parts:

1: It's set in a custom world, fantasy style, with no connection to our world, which gives the author a lot of freedom and neatly exposed how accustomed I am to seeing this in fantasy books with the slightest hint of magic, and how much it throws me when a hard scifi story exists in the same kind of place.

2: Everything about the AIs carefully considers how they would develop, rather than just writing mechanical humans. They're wonderful and alien in small, interesting ways. And the book is saturated with conversations about them, their drives and design challenges. It feels like a successor to Free Radical, one of his earliest books, but more polished.

3: This book takes no shortcuts. It shows you how the protagonist talks his way past people, plans his heists, and even how he finds and maintains his contacts. (Transmet for example had a habit of letting Spider summon up past contacts whenever he needed a lead, before burning them, making me wonder how he ever made those connections. It worked there, but this stood out in contrast.) I love stories about characters who are smarter than me, and this one shows him being smart. Every step of the investigation feels earned. As trite as the buddy-cop-robot-murder-investigation premise feels... for me, this might be The buddy-cop-robot-murder-investigation book.

Bonus stuff: There's a DM's fascination with how things got the way they are in the setting, from infrastructure to bureaucracy, to technology, to politics. An analyst's perspective that informs pretty much everything else.Young has a real knack for making careful analyses of situations and emotional states almost absurdly engaging, and he has a focus on workable AI designs that I really enjoy. His writing voice shows through in places in the novel's narration and dialogue, but it has the effect of making the characters seem more thoughtful and intelligent than you often get with this genre so I don't mind it. There's not much hacking in this one, which is a shame because he does it well elsewhere, but what's here is solid and believable, and the social engineering probably make up for whatever's missing. I'm probably overselling it, but if you enjoy scifi, I'd say it's worth it for the AIs and the world at the least.

A few years ago, while we were cooking, my SO showed me a blog post about common spices and their substitutions. I thought it'd be cool to use that to make a chart we could hang on the wall. It turned into a fun light research project, then a fun art project.

I started reading various blogs and realized that while many covered the same core spices, there were a lot of others that only one blog or another mentioned. So I started gathering them all up. As I read about them on Wikipedia I'd stumble into their histories, and scope creep hit. I decided to add a column for interesting facts about each. (While gathering those, I was kind of struck at the disparity between them - some spices, have centuries of warfare, murder, and espionage wrapped around them, while others are so common or easy to grow that nobody seems to have stabbed anyone at all for it.)

I built it first as a spreadsheet in Google sheets while I was researching, pasted it into a poster-size libre office writer document for layout and font changes, exported that as a pdf so I could import it into GIMP. That let me make more detailed changes and add the flourishes that hopefully make it look like something that might've hung on the wall in your grandparents' kitchen.

This was a pretty casual project spread over seven months. It's got forty-some spices with descriptions, fun facts, and substitutions shamelessly plagiarized from cooking blogs and Wikipedia.

I've learned since that several spices are actually really unspecific, like what’s sold as oregano apparently may come from several different plants. So I'll say it's useful for cooking and accurate to the best of my ability, but I wouldn't reference it as a historical or scientific resources.

Garlic Mustard is invasive where we live, so we try to knock it back a bit, and use it to make pesto, and fillings for pasta

I wrote this for !zerowaste but it kind of feels like a better fit for diy.

https://i.imgur.com/oBgXyBW.jpg

I don’t have any in-progress pictures of this one, but it’s such a simple design I doubt you'll need them. I responded to a post on the local Everything is Free page where a guy was cleaning out all the lumber left under his porch. At the end of the week he had a dumpster coming and anything that hadn’t been taken he would throw away.

I loaded up my car with what I could fit, but there was this big roughcut 2x12 plank that looked like it had been used as scaffolding (paint marks and boot prints). It was too long to fit in my car but he was renting a chopsaw with the dumpster, so he offered to cut the board to length when they showed up and set it aside for me. So I was able to go back for it (ever since, I’ve brought saws, a tape measure, a square, and a marker with me whenever I pick up lumber). I asked him to cut it to a six foot length, and he even saved the extra for me, which worked out well because I made the rest of the bench out of it.

After having spent some time restoring fancy furniture, I wanted to try something more rustic. I cut the leftover material into three pieces, two legs/sides, and one square piece to cut in half diagonally for support. On the two uprights, I cut a decorative notch in the base, and tapered the sides. I had to use a hand saw for most of this as the skillsaw didn't like the thick plank.

https://i.imgur.com/akUnIBT.png

I nailed down through the top into the legs, then flipped it, put the 45s in place and drove screws through the angled surface into the legs and the underside of the bench. Then I drove screws in from the outside of the legs, and nails through the benchtop.

I gave the benchtop and sides a very casual sanding, just to knock away any splinters and rough spots, and urethaned it so it would last longer.

It's not as pretty as some of the things I've made, but it's strong, and simple, and was made out of wood I got for free and screws/nails/urethane I already had.

Reckoning press is a nonprofit, annual journal of creative writing on environmental justice. I dig the stories I've read of theirs so far, and they seem to have really good goals.

I could probably also post this to zerowaste, but I think food seems like a good fit. This is about as easy and low-risk as making cheese gets, and a great way to use up expired milk!