JacobCoffinWrites

Thanks! I pulled it from one of the more popular solarpunk flags. Out of all the ones I've seen, many of which feature the sun-and-gear motif in some configuration, it's my favorite symbol for the movement; It's very simple and visually clear, and easy to render with one color.

A stack of ewaste laptops I'm fixing up to give away, and this jailbroken Chromebook I reinstalled with Alpine Linux which has become my writing computer whenever I'm out and about.

In the northeast there used to be a fair bit, but I think a lot has been torn up in the process of making bike paths. A lot of the small towns I grew up in still have intact tracks running between their centers, I'd love if these pods made an appearance, if only to show folks that trains can be useful to them.

Man I wish our trains ran anywhere near that constantly. They stop the public transit around midnight in my city, but that doesn't stop it from being tremendously useful during the rest of the time. You learn to plan for it, and advocate for improvements whenever you can

Glad you like them!

Sorry, the ones I'm talking about are TV screen sized.

Like this:

I've seen them burn through steel, so it can get small stuff at least hot enough to work. Hopefully at least equivalent to a coffee can forge

Thanks for the info! Collecting the heat and regulating it for a job like printing makes a lot of sense to me. Similarly, there's a bunch of other tasks that wouldn't require the same kind of precision - smelting metal in a crucible, heating metal to forge it (I'm hoping to try to build a solar forge this summer if I can get a fresnel lense from a rear projection TV), maybe heating a glassblowing furnace. Those just looked kinda small in the big space I'd laid out.

And yeah, I know photovoltaics are more practical for most things since they line up with how we already do things. I mostly include what I think of as weird solar because solarpunk art is already lousy with photovoltaic panels but there are a ton of other ways to directly use solar for thermal and light. I really like the idea of using energy in the form we receive it to minimize conversion losses, and to put less strain on the grid/batteries. Sometimes the art goals scrape up against the other goals a bit.

Thanks again!

A lot of people have used time travel to steal Games Workshop's IP

Thanks! And sure, I can do that.

Thanks! I'm glad you like it

I think so. I mean, I'll agree that a lot of the art tagged as solarpunk is utopian, unactionable, and generally gives a poor first impression of the rest of the genre/movement. The chromed scifi megacities with trees stuck to the sides of skyscrapers are about as attainable as concept art of a flying city or a moon colony. If they never looked past the paintings on deviantart or artstation or whatever they'd probably get a pretty skewed perspective on it.

But I'd say the answer to that is just to make more art that reflects the rest of the movement better since the answers and discussions and real life projects are all happening

Yes, it's a home for solitary bees. There are a bunch of species of solitary bees, who don't live in hives or swarm with others. They're still an important part of our ecosystem and play a big role in pollination but they don't get quite as much attention as the honeybees.

They collect pollen to survive and to feed their young. Typically they find a hole of the right size, like the ones in these sticks, and make a bunch of compartments inside (out of mud or chewed plant fibers) where they lay their eggs. They give each egg some pollen they've gathered and seal them in for the winter. In the spring the eggs hatch and new bees emerge, eat the pollen, dig their way out, and start the cycle again.

It's good to identify the kinds of bees you want, since they need different size holes, and to put the house somewhere the morning sun will hit it, near some flowers or flowering shrubs.

It's a nice way to help provide habitats. Solitary bees are typically pretty skittish and won't/can't form angry swarms because of the whole solitary thing. Carpenter bees will sometimes fly close to humans, but mostly because they're just big curious bumbling buddies and they're nearsighted. Once they figure out what you are they fly away. I've never had any trouble with the residents of our bee house.