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Solarpunk is plants on buildings (slrpnk.net)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/memes@slrpnk.net
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[–] -2 points 4 months ago (37 children)

A lot of people like the word "solarpunk" but don't really like the meaning behind the manifesto. Part of the issue is that they don't want to be decolonised, so they don't really see PoC voices as being inherently valid. That connects to the aesthetic, becoming increasingly "white but with plants". This is also why there's that connection between Solarpunk and Cottagecore, despite Cottagecore implying that you'd have slaves.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (36 children)

    Cottagecore implies you'd have slaves?

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (24 children)

    I think a bunch of cottagecore creators have talked about how the fantasy is the cottagecore life but without the labour. Add to the idea that the aesthetics come straight from America during slavery (or Europe when the rich had servants), and there's a pretty straight line between cottage core and who is mysteriously supposed to be doing this labour. At the very least, the idea of cosplaying rural life while servants actually do the labour has been part of the fabric of cottagecore.

    Having said that, it's an aesthetic (unlike Solarpunk which is meant to be a movement), and there are plenty of folk who are into the aesthetic and just like knitting and so on.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I think a bunch of cottagecore creators have talked about how the fantasy is the cottagecore life but without the labour.

    That seems to contradict your original statement that cottagecore implies slavery, because if it did then this would be redundant and there would be no need for the "but".

    Cottagecore implies labor, yes. If someone is saying they want a cottagecore life without the labor, then they've probably got their head too far up in Wuthering Heights and imagine themselves as English Gentry. That doesn't define cottagecore, though.

    Most people who like cottagecore enjoy doing things themselves. Fibercraft of all kinds, soapmaking and candlemaking, baking from scratch. None of that implies slavery, and if you think it does then I would ask where you think those things come from when you buy them from the store.

    It's not merely an aesthetic. Just like solarpunk, the aesthetic has been separated from the lifestyle and sanitized, but not in all cases. Homesteading, making things from scratch, is very much a lifestyle.

    "Cottage industry" is already a term for people who sell things they make small-scale in their own homes. That seems economically empowering, no? Seems like it would be an integral part to any real solarpunk community, so it makes sense that there's a connection between solarpunk and cottagecore.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Your comment is more or less just lawyering. I'm acknowledging that a lot of people are in it for the aesthetic. You seem to disagree with the meaning of "aesthetic". IMO if you're using it as supplemental to your way of life, it's aesthetic to me, in that it's a hobby, and not political. In fact the closer to political you get, the closer you tend to get to the kind of libertarian, ecofascist, white supremacist ideology. Relevant video.

    To re-iterate, I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy cottagecore. Have fun, enjoy, make things, it's great, but it's 100% a hobby as distinct from Solarpunk.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I ain't a lawyer. I presented a rational argument that disagrees with your own. If that's "just lawyering" to you, then I don't want to hear you talk about "ecofascist." If you want to be anti-fascist, great, I'm right there with you, but that means you have to tolerate disagreement when it's presented rationally, at least enough to engage with it rationally, instead of dismissing it with trite little catchphrases like "that's just lawyering."

    It seems you're the one who doesn't know the meaning of "aesthetic." Aesthetics are surface-level appearances. If something is purely aesthetic (or should I say solely), then it's superficial. But an aesthetic can go hand-in-hand with function or ideation. An aesthetic can emerge organically.

    There's always an aesthetic, so criticizing something for having an aesthetic falls short. Criticize things for having a sanitized aesthetic divorced from the philosophy or politics of the movement it represents, sure. If you go around dressing lile Little Bo Peep but you bought the costume on Etsy because you don't even know how to sew, that's not cottagecore. That's Little House on the Prairie cosplay.

    That doesn't say anything about cottagecore as a movement, anymore than someone wearing plastic "steampunk" goggles with useless gears to a convention says anything about "steampunk." It's just an appropriated aesthetic.

    IMO if you're using it as supplemental to your way of life, it's aesthetic to me, in that it's a hobby, and not political.

    That's not what aesthetic means. An amateur golfer wearing sperries, chinos, and a polo isn't doing it just for the aesthetic. He has the aesthetic, sure, and if he wasn't a golfer you could say he's cosplaying as one. But if golfing is just a hobby to him, that doesn't mean he's only doing it for the aesthetic.

    If someone mends their own clothing or has a cottage business, that supplements their way of life, yes. That's more than a hobby. It might not be political, but it's certainly more than an aesthetic.

    In fact the closer to political you get, the closer you tend to get to the kind of libertarian, ecofascist, white supremacist ideology.

    That sounds like an assumption. You can cherrypick a few examples, sure. Someone could also try equating punk with fascism by cherrypicking a few examples of neonazis. It would be a false equivalency, and those neonazis would get their asses kicked if they showed up at most punk venues.

    Cottagecore has been integral to black history, whether they know it or not. They might not call it that, but part of poverty is that you learn to make do with what you have, do more with less. You learn to mend your own clothing, make food from scratch. Maybe they don't dress like this is Tudor England, but the underlying philosophy is there, even if they think about it in different terms. So calling it close to white supremacy is kinda wild.

    And it's pretty funny that you would share a youtube link right after preaching about politics as a lifestyle...

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (19 children)

    How about some solar powered robot slaves?

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (18 children)

    Maybe the entire train of thought for slavery is bad? Like maybe decolonise your mind? Maybe the thing we're aiming for isn't just pastoralism + technology, but ecology. Maybe the goal isn't exploitation at all, but coexistence.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (17 children)

    Their word choice was poor, true. I wouldn't call them "robot slaves," because a robot isn't a person and therefore can't be enslaved. Your dishwasher isn't a slave. Your computer isn't a slave. Your printer isn't a slave.

    I'm not here to back up a commenter from an .ml instance.

    But, "exploitation" doesn't really fit here. How do you "exploit" a robot? It's not a person or even an animal, it doesn't have consciousness or sentience or however you want to define an entity with intrinsic worth deserving of rights.

    You can call it a robot maid or a robot butler or a robot servitor or whatever you want. I wouldn't call it a slave or even a serf. But at the end of the day, it's just a robot. And if you run it on solar power and recycle parts to eliminate e-waste, then it can certainly fit with solarpunk.

    Ecology is good, yes. Technology can work in harmony with ecology, if it's done right. The problem with our current society is that that's not among its values or priorities, so it designs technology aimed at increasing shareholder value or military dominance. If those values can be changed, and new priorities adopted, then technology can certainly go hand-in-hand with ecology.

    But pastoralism will be essential to a solarpunk society, whether you want to admit that or not. Maybe the term comes with baggage because of how it's been implemented in the past, but we're not bound by the past. We can implement new ways of pastoralism.

    If you want to support a large population, agriculture is essential. It can be done on a smaller-scale, and non-industrially, especially if you're just supporting a village or a small town. But that requires labor, and if you replace the brunt of that with robots, you free up hands for other tasks. The robots don't even have to be humanoid.

    If you want to support entire cities, it's going to take a lot of agriculture. You can do vertical warehouse farming, sure, especially with agribots. But since you've already called out ecofascism, I can only assume the world you envision will have at least 8 billion mouths to feed. Maybe 12 or 15 billion by the time the population levels off on its own without any interventions. How do you plan to feed all those people without exploitation, environmental degradation, and industrial agriculture? I'm not saying you can't, or that you shouldn't try, but pragmatically you'll need to at least have an idea in order for it to be a realistic vision for the future.

    Coexistence and decolonization are great, but there are still practical necessities that need to be addressed in order to maintain a society of any kind. "Ecology" is a great start, and a necessary counterbalance to the current state of the world; but long-term, if your vision doesn't include some rendition of "pastoralism + technology," then I just can't imagine how you plan to support a world with an exponentially growing human population...

    And if you're not thinking about these things, then solarpunk seems to be very little more than an aesthetic to you.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    OK so firstly, when I say "exploitation", I mean in the economic sense. So you "exploit" the land to make a sugar plantation and then the plantation pulls all the resources out of the soil, you take the sugar and leave. This is basically what colonisation was, it was exploitation of people, yes, but also fundamentally of the entire ecosystem, the land, the water, and so on.

    Permaculture is in some ways a response to this, to take something already "degraded" and build back. So you take degraded soils, then you invest in those soils over years through a cycle, and you use nature to help you. Then you give nature the first spoils, and you take what remains. It's a fundamentally different way of thinking to pastoralism. While the solarpunk manifesto doesn't mention permaculture, it's pretty clear this is the intent.

    The “punk” in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction.

    Part of the problem with the manifesto is that it expects a lot of prior knowledge. Most people don't know what "decolonialism" even is, so it just becomes a buzzword, but you can tell by the thoughtfulness of the way the manifesto is written that they have the prior knowledge, and expect that of the people reading it.

    The meme is about "what if everything white people did was right? Just add some plants to it!" and like, unless they actually contend with the history, that's the kind of solarpunk we'll get.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (15 children)

    Their word choice was poor, true. I wouldn’t call them “robot slaves,” because

    Exactly, robot already means slave so it means "mechanical slave's slave". So in my grand vision for the future, even the mechanical slaves get their own slaves!

    I’m not here to back up a commenter from an .ml instance.

    What you have against "machine learning"? FYI I'm not a stalinist.

    Anyway, I think pastoralism is fundamentally impossible for the vast majority when we have 12 billion people. We'll want high urban density to save energy and resources on infrastructure. What I personally envision is a single gigantic apartment block that stands along surrounded by miles of mixed fields, food forests and nature. Every apartment is a luxury apartment with an amazing view and you can just walk out and enjoy the communal gardens, or putter around in a small area reserved for you. I believe that would be the most energy and resource efficient way to live in nature. Pastoralism is only possible in a mostly empty country like the USA.

    And except using fusion power to create protein or something like rice and wheat grain analogues directly in bioreactors, it will never be efficient to do vertical farming. Converting sunlight into electricity to power grow lights is never more efficient than greenhouses tended to by farmbots.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (14 children)

    Exactly, robot already means slave so it means "mechanical slave's slave". So in my grand vision for the future, even the mechanical slaves get their own slaves!

    Holy shit, I hope this is sarcasm because if not you're delusional dude

    What you have against "machine learning"? FYI I'm not a stalinist.

    Just so you know, your instance is run by proud bolsheviks, not AI-researchers...

    What I personally envision is...

    Okay, that's fine in fiction as long as you don't care about sounding convincing, but in reality providing food, water, utilities, and living space to that many people is a bit more complex than that.

    And except using fusion power to create protein or something like rice and wheat grain analogues directly in bioreactors,

    That's not what fusion is. Nuclear fusion is only necessary for changing atoms into different elements. Bioreactors and protein synthesis are chemical reactions, not nuclear. They only change on the molecular level.

    it will never be efficient to do vertical farming.

    It might be less energy efficient, but if you have infinite solar generation that won't matter. Vertical warehouse farming is more efficient in terms of space, water consumption, fertilizer, and most every other externality such as pesticides, harvesting, etc.. It can even be hydroponic or aeroponic, using self-contained and circular systems, and almost every step can be automated.

    Converting sunlight into electricity to power grow lights is never more efficient than greenhouses tended to by farmbots.

    That won't be the main issue if you have infinite solar power, and farmbots can still be used in vertical warehouse farming. Single-layer greenhouses take up a lot of space though, especially if you need to produce enough to feed several billion people.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (13 children)

    I do in fact believe in communism. Just not in Stalinism and that kind of repression. Repression based on "ideological purity" that exists very much outside of socialism too you know? Just because I believe in communism doesn't make me evil or suspicious. And obviously I was joking about robot slaves. Are we done with this shit?

    Anyway we don't have infinite solar. Even kite power, the most efficient wind power costs resources and space. I generally do agree that energy isn't really the issue though, it's resources and infrastructure.

    If you have a small knee high greenhouse, it will always be more efficient to actually generate chemical energy than vertical farming. Just replace the photovoltaic panel with glass. And for most crops and sensible farming you don't need greenhouses anyway. Shit just grows in the dirt.

    Vertical farming calories (to actually feed people) can only be sensible if you have fusion power sometimes in the future. Fission power will eventually run out and is too expensive. Vertical farming is only used for salads and no calorie stuff, but it's fundamentally a dead end as a large scale solution.

    Also if you look at the most calorie efficient crops like corn, wheat and potatoes, you need about the size of France to produce enough calories for all 8 billion people. Space is not the issue. With advances in robotics and open source farm bots you can just grow the stuff in the ground without greenhouses and democratize the process.

    And about the arcology, instead of sitting in a city and growing and harvesting food or collecting water and and transporting all of it from far away, you just put it in nature and harvest all the basic things directly there using minimal energy. I mean water just falls down from the sky and only needs to be stored. You'd use solar or kite power for energy and grid scale batteries.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (12 children)

    There are anarcho-communist instances here, but the .ml admins are literal bolsheviks. As in, authoritarian communists who are notoriously all about that ideological purity and repression. You can find plenty of leftist comms here where people still shit on .ml for being authoritarian.

    I'm not saying that's you, because I've met the occasional .ml user who just wasn't aware when they made their account. But by and large, when you see an .ml user, it's usually little better than a troll. Hence the stigma, incase you start noticing a pattern.

    I'm not saying you're evil for believing in communism. If we were to discuss Marx philosophically, I'd agree on a lot of points. I generally like Merleau-Ponty's takes on Marxism. But I will continue to shit on any leninists out there when I encounter them.

    It's good to know you were joking about the robot slaves, thank you for clarifying. You should know that most people here won't respond well to "jokes" about slavery.

    For the rest of your comment, thank you for finally saying something intelligent. You're right, solar isn't literally infinite. Perhaps I should have said "virtually infinite," as once you have the infrastructure in place you can produce as much as it can capture without consuming additional resources, aside from maintenance.

    A skyscraper with solar panels covering its southern face can produce a lot of vegetables. Sure, maybe carb-heavy vegetables still need to be done outdoors, but a balanced diet requires more than carbs. And producing vegetables in vertical farms lets you do it much closer to the centers of population, eliminating some of the needs for transportation and storage.

    Grains and legumes might still need fields, but those also keep better and you can easily produce enough to store to make it through the following winter while still keeping a surplus. That's harder to do with leafy greens and other vegetables, which are still necessary for balanced nutrition.

    "you just put it in nature and harvest all the basic things directly there using minimal energy" is a really bad summary of agriculture, though.

    And not everywhere has enough rainfall to produce crops exclusively from catchment, especially now with glaciers melting and rivers going dry. Circular systems that can reuse moisture will be increasingly important as the world heats up.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago (11 children)

    A skyscraper with solar panels covering its southern face can produce a lot of vegetables. Sure, maybe carb-heavy vegetables still need to be done outdoors, but a balanced diet requires more than carbs.

    You need the chemical energy to survive and that requires a lot of light to convert. That is the "critical path". Forget about vegetables, they are not important to solving the food problem.

    You're so arrogant but fail to understand the basic engineering and math problems. This is a waste of time.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (10 children)

    You act so smug, but you don't seem to realize that warehouse farming is already a thing. This isn't some personal utopian fantasy theory of mine, it's a thing that already exists and can be implemented at a larger scale to solve problems ranging from food deserts, malnutrition, transportation costs, winter spoilage, pests, water consumption, run-off, and habitat destruction due to the agricultural demands of feeding several billion people.

    There are specific wavelengths of light that plants use to do photosynthesis. Those wavelengths can be isolated, and there are special LEDs designed specifically for this purpose. They're quite efficient. Or you can use fluorescent lights, albeit they're less efficient than LEDs. You don't need the full spectrum and intensity of direct sunlight, and in fact that can be harmful in hot/dry climates or during droughts, especially as global warming accelerates. Warehouse agriculture has much higher yields than outdoor farming because you can control the climate perfectly while keeping out pests and diseases.

    As for fertilizers and compost, they can be used in warehouse agriculture with more efficiency and with less environmental impact than in conventional farm fields. So your chemical energy point is moot.

    You talk to me of the engineering and math problems, but clearly you're the one who fails to understand them.

    Don't you know how much environmental destruction is currently due to clearing more space for agriculture? And you think that won't get worse as the world population nearly doubles in size, unless we start doing multi-story warehouse farming to feed major population centers?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (9 children)

    you don’t seem to realize that warehouse farming is already a thing.

    No, you're just wrong. It is a thing for profitable vegetables or leafy greens or strawberries, but not for producing calories. It will not feed 15 billion people.

    With something like 3 kWh of solar irradiance per day per m² you get a pretty abysmal <5% efficiency for producing food calories compared to the 20% efficiency of solar panels. So you quintuple the amount of land you need with solar panels, maybe a little less with higher efficiency indoors. Less with kite power. Again less with fusion power. It's still alot of embedded energy.

    I made this table to see how many square meters actually feeds a person, very rough numbers but all I've found. It's less than 250m² in moderate climates to produce 2.2 kcal food. If we stop eating meat and "luxury foods" from around the world we drastically reduce energy costs and reduce land use so we can rewild like 90% of the current arable land.

    Conclusion: There is no shortage of land to feed 15 billion people.

    And why grow your vegetables and fruits and strawberries far off, or in a bunker, when you can build a million local greenhouses in your community that could additionally serve as food gardens or parks in colder weather?
    Kcal / acre / year Kcal / m² / day kWh / m² / day Efficiency from 3kWh sunlight Land m² / person Protein %
    Potato 15,000,000 10.0 0.0116 0.39% 219 9.50%
    Potato Ireland 2017 FAO 14,163,653 9.5 0.0110 0.37% 232 9.50%
    Potato USA 2019 FAO 15,858,541 10.6 0.0123 0.41% 207 9.50%
    Potato Oregon 2019 USDA 20,940,336 14.0 0.0162 0.54% 157 9.50%
    Potato Simplify Gardening 18,036,045 12.1 0.0140 0.47% 182 9.50%
    Sweet potato 3x hypothetical 93,000,000 62.2 0.0721 2.40% 35 7.00%
    Rice 11,000,000 7.4 0.0085 0.28% 299 8.10%
    Rice USA 2018 FAO 14,655,018 9.8 0.0114 0.38% 224 8.10%
    Soybeans 6,271,628 4.2 0.0049 0.16% 525 36.40%
    Chickpeas 6,013,636 4.0 0.0047 0.16% 547 20.50%
    Chickpeas China FAO 8,329,810 5.6 0.0065 0.22% 395 20.50%
    Chickpeas Israel 2017 FAO 9,494,407 6.3 0.0074 0.25% 347 20.50%
    Chickpeas Turkey 1,440,259 1.0 0.0011 0.04% 2284 20.50%
    Pinto Beans 23.70%
    Corn 15,000,000 10.0 0.0116 0.39% 219 10.40%
    Corn Jordan 2018 FAO 58,323,364 39.0 0.0452 1.51% 56 10.40%
    Corn USA 2018 FAO 18,413,214 12.3 0.0143 0.48% 179 10.40%
    Wheat 4,000,000 2.7 0.0031 0.10% 822 14.50%
    Wheat Ireland 2017 15,670,035 10.5 0.0122 0.41% 210 14.50%
    Oats 175 bu/acre 1,125,399 0.8 0.0009 0.03% 2923 17.00%
    Chlorella 86,045,604 57.5 0.0667 2.22% 38 58.40%
    Solein solarfoods.fi 193,371,336 129.3 0.1500 5.00% 17 65.00%
    Microalgae 5% hypothetical 193,371,336 129.3 0.1500 5.00% 17 57.47%

    PS: Solein claims 5% by splitting water into hydrogen using solar power and then using hydrogen to feed single celled organisms. If we ever find a way to split water into hydrogen directly using fusion we'd be set. But until then it's not more efficient than other food algae (also about 5% efficient, which is already great for mostly protein).

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (8 children)

    If you think leafy greens are only good for making a profit, then you're the one who's wrong. Nutrition is about more than just calories. Someone who doesn't get enough calories gets malnourished, someone who doesn't get enough nutrients gets malnutrition. It's two different things. Vegetables are necessary and you can't just write them off, much as you seem to want to.

    Also, a vertical warehouse operation has multiple stories and can have panels mounted all up the southern face. You don't need to have an entirely horizontal solar farm, so no it doesn't quintuple the land you need.

    And yes, eliminating meat from the common diet can help to rewild arable land, but that's a completely separate conversation and not an argument against warehouse agriculture.

    Saying there's no shortage of land to feed 15 billion people is irresponsible though, because without any major changes to the way things are done, feeding 15 billion people would absolutely result in more habitat destruction.

    And why grow your vegetables and fruits and strawberries far off, or in a bunker, when you can build a million local greenhouses in your community that could additionally serve as food gardens or parks in colder weather?

    You don't seem to understand the issue at all. Building a million "local" greenhouses takes up space. Each greenhouse has a footprint. The millionth one over won't be very "local."

    The point of warehouse farming (rather, one of the points), is that it can be done in urban centers where there's no space for greenhouses. It's literally a solution for food deserts and transport costs associated with the majority of food being produced in rural areas. Warehouse agriculture brings food production closer to population centers. I've already pointed that out multiple times and you just seem to ignore it.

    If we ever find a way to split water into hydrogen directly using fusion we'd be set.

    That's not what fusion is at all. I've already corrected you on this, which you also ignored.

    Nuclear fusion is when you take two atoms and fuse them into a different kind of atom. The simplest form is making one helium atom from two hydrogen isotopes.

    It has nothing to do with "splitting water into hydrogen." We can already do that. It's called electrolysis. Plants need more than just hydrogen though, so I'm not sure what your point is there.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (7 children)

    That’s not what fusion is at all.

    You didn't correct me, you misunderstood me. Keep up lol. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolysis#Hydrogen_production

    Solein (single celled microorganism) can use hydrogen and oxygen as fuel to produce carbo hydrates and protein. Needs co2 and some minerals too of course. If you could genetically engineer it to taste good and look less like puke, it would be perfect.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (6 children)

    Okay, good luck with that. You go feed your people hydroslop and I'll build warehouse farms and we'll see whose people have better nutrition.

    Also, the radiolysis page says nothing about fusion. The nuclear waste it talks about repurposing is from fission reactors. Keep up.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (5 children)

    More radiation, more hydrogen splitting. Anyway it was just an idea which you took to imply I don't even understand what fusion is.

    But the overall point is that you don't need anything like this. If you stop producing meat and resource or energy inefficient foods like almonds we have more than enough land to feed even 20 billion people. There is no need to invent superfood or vertical farming. It's not the critical path. Much more important is saving heating and cooling in buildings and reducing the amount of transport and infrastructure spread we need.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (4 children)

    Except fusion waste isn't radioactive, it's just helium. The fuel is literally already hydrogen, so I don't know why you would even want to fuse hydrogen into helium just to try to split a water molecule. You literally do electrolysis to split the water to get the hydrogen to use in a fusion reactor to make helium and release a ton of energy. There's no radioactive material involved.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    This is just speculation, more like a "if someone figures it out". We don't have working fusion yet anyway. Fusion does produce radiation, which can be used to split additional water. Or maybe this might be impossible with a fusion reactor setup. Normally the radiation is used to heat water and convert it into steam to drive a turbine. But specifically to grow food, hydrogen production could be more efficient. Say in a space colony too far away from the sun.

    Otherwise, light and photosynthesis will basically always be the most efficient to grow calories for sustenance.

    BTW there is also the concept of aneutronic fusion to directly generate electricity without steam turbines.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    There's no "figuring it out." Fusion waste isn't radioactive. You can't do radiolysis with it.

    There's a difference between radiation and radioactivity. Heat and light are radiation. Radiolysis requires radioactivity.

    It's not "more efficient" to take hydrogen, apply fusion to turn it into helium and generate power, and then use that power to "split" water molecules.

    You already have the hydrogen from doing the electrolysis. The closest thing you could do is capture the power generated by the fusion and convert it into electricity, and then use that electricity to do more electrolysis. I'd have to look at the specific numbers to calculate loss, because fusion is weird and generates enormous amounts of energy, but it also isn't captured with 100% efficiency. And besides, it takes power to run the fusion reactors, which is currently the main hurdle in the way of running it at scale.

    If you're in a space colony though, water is too precious to be splitting into hydrogen and helium. You would probably just get your hydrogen directly from a gas giant instead.

    Otherwise, light and photosynthesis will basically always be the most efficient to grow calories for sustenance.

    So we've come full circle, and you've admitted that nuclear fusion cannot generate calories. Great.

    You also continue to ignore macro- and micro- nutrients. Dietary requirements are more than just "calories."

    Lastly, aside from aneutronic fusion being hardly more experimental than it is theoretical, that's a complete red herring and has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    So we’ve come full circle, and you’ve admitted that nuclear fusion cannot generate calories. Great.

    Sure it can't, because it doesn't exist. I said that outside some fantastical sci-fi technology like fusion directly producing hydrogen, sunlight will always be more efficient to produce calories. And you only need a radiation source for radiolysis, radioactive waste is only one source of it.

    Every single method we have to produce chemical energy is less efficient than sunlight and plants.

    Because solar panels, LEDs, hydrolysis, all have low efficiency. You loose massive amounts of energy and therefor space when your goal is to produce calories.

    And sure we need vegetables and for that vertical farming is fine, great even, except for calories. But if we wanted to solve climate change, the infrastructure like solar panels and pumps contain a lot of embedded energy that you could save. It's only profitable under capitalism and land hoarding and in a society where we consume way too much meat.

    One economic collapse or global conflict and all our complex supply chains go away. So if we're dependent on tractors and heavy machinery and fossil fuel and fertilizers, or on or robots and electronics or LEDs or solar panels just to produce food - the vast majority of people remain slaves to industry for their very basic needs.

    The real solarpunk for me is potato farming. Or some sci-fi genetic engineering to produce shrubs that produce all sorts of food without needing tilling or fertilizer.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    So much of what you're saying is actually an argument in favor of warehouse farming and you don't even realize it, that it's obvious you've never read the requisite literature, and I'm done trying to explain this to you.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (10 children)

    Cottagecore -> what if my entire life was based around routines of dainty activities, while the help does all the hard labor?

    Yes. Its a fantasy of (specifically white) privilege, with style cues/motifs.

    From the wikipage:

    In British English, the term cottage typically denotes a small, cosy building. During English Feudalism, cottages housed cotters (peasant labourers), who served their manorial lord.[6] The term now describes many kinds of small houses of rustic or traditional style.

    Cottagecore is a fantasy of being the wife of an American plantation owner, (or I guess maybe a single/unmarried girlboss plantation owner) but with the setting transposed to England, where the required slavery/servitude to make this any kind of plausible has a slightly less ugly veneer of class or posh or whatnot over it.

    None of it works without an inherently brutal class structure.

    Its the Disneyification of being a plantation owner.

    Its literally laughably obviously a power/status fantasy escapism. Its barely any different from 'I wish I was an actual princess.'

    You wouldn't have had one person living in an actual cottage, you'd have had 8-12, they'd be cotters, and they'd be doing 12 to 16 hours of manual labor a day.

    Cottagecore is where the lord and lady downsize from their nearby manor, move into one of the cottages of their serfs, because it is more quaint! ... and then the cotters I guess just sleep in tents outside of the cottage or are otherwise invisible or are ghosts that can till the fields or something.

    Its a nostalgia that then gentrifies that nostalgia's version of a low income neighborhood.

    Again, it is hilarious how un self aware one has to be somehow not notice the amount of privilege this all just presumes.

    This is what happens when elitist white liberal women try to imagine an idealized living -> they completely disregard the labor and power relations of material reality, and invent a remixed version of plantations, with all the ugly parts ignored or denied, and then spend most of the time focusing on making up basically performative etiquettes to define the lifestyle.

    I am so fucking sick of Tumblrinas.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    It's not manorcore, or estatecore, or plantationcore. It's cottagecore. These people are dreaming of being cotters, not gentry.

    Integral to the cottagecore movement is making handcrafted, small-batch items. Doing your own repairs, mending your own clothing. Like a peasant would do.

    Not to serve some lord or lady. It doesn't need that aspect. It has more to do with the self-reliance and the resilience that comes with it.

    That's why it meshes so well with solarpunk. You think a solarpunk village wouldn't have cottage industry, or people who can mend their own clothing?

    By the way, cottage industry was integral to the satyagraha movement which ultimately pushed Great Britain out of power in India. So trying to equate it with the wealthy side of class conflict and colonialism is a huge mischaracterization.

    Why would an oligarch care about mending their own clothes? They can just buy new ones. Cottagecore empowers the poor, and trying to stigmatize it as bourgeois does a disservice to the proletariat.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    It sounds like the fantasy of being a cotter without having to serve the manor, rather than the fantasy of being slaver pretending to be a cotter? Peasant life was brutal because any surplus (and then some) was extracted by the ruling leisure class. Without that, a peasant life on fertile ground would have been pretty decent.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Cottagecore -> what if my entire life was based around routines of dainty activities, while the help does all the hard labor?

    Why such an uncharitable take? Maybe people just fantasize about living in a post-scarcity utopia where robots do all the work and every human can cottage core as much as they like? Go watch some episodes of Star Trek: TNG, there's cottage core all over the place there. The setting has extremely advanced technology, but many folks live pretty simple lives in semi-rural settings.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Because being whimsical about slavery just outside the frame of the picture is morally disgusting to me, in the extreme.

    Feel free to believe this or not, but I wasn't even trying to be uncharitable... that is just my plain and honest read of it.

    I tend to not have much charity for things I view as atrocities, I suppose.

    And I have the same fundamental problem with scifi that has automatons in it as well.

    The droids in Star Wars?

    While its clear that some of them are... not really what you'd likely call sapient, or event sentient... many of them clearly are. They are slaves too, and that this is barely ever explored or taken seriously, at least by the more popular and well known parts of Star Wars canon, bothers me a lot.

    Star Trek? TNG?

    An entire (rather incredibly good in my opinion) episode is basically just a legal/philosophical battle of words as to whether or not Data is deserving of the same rights as a biological member of StarFleet.

    Yeah, there are some episodes where other human-esque societies live in cutesy little homes, but ... they're clusters of homes, in a fairly small area, a village or town that tends to have a pretty egalitarian structure and ethic... they're not an isolated cutesy home for indentured servants to work a plot of land, that is owned by someone else.

    ... maybe you've heard of Blade Runner?

    "Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it?, That's what it is, to be a slave."

    ... says the doomed android, the cyberpunk escaped plantation slave, to his would-be murderer/slave-hunter.

    Or, you could watch The Second Rennaissance episodes of the AniMatrix to see an arguably justified yet nonetheless horrific, brutal and total revolt of enslaved machines.

    You are completely missing the point of both what I said and what this thread is about.

    You only care about the outward superficial appearance, not the conditions that give rise to it.

    Grow up.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

    The folks that I know that enjoy cottagecore aesthetics most are a married black lesbian couple 😅

    I'm kinda finding myself wondering if I just haven't really existed in the parts of the internet where the shittiest folks youre talking about exist and make up much of the culture

    Cause like, my first thought is that theres no reason you can't just have a cozy domestic life in a cottage with pretty wildflowers where you just do the labor yourself 😅 thats what the friends in question I'm thinking of want. I enjoy cottagecore aesthetically, though not as much as other aesthetic generes, and I'm more than happy to do my own labor 🤷🏻‍♂️

    Like even in the excerpt you quoted the people living in the cottage ARE the laborers. Maybe I just don't engage enough with cottagecore folks online, but I don't see anything that really links cottagecore to someone else doing the labor. You can do the labor. While living in the cottage.

    Edit: Yeah the Wikipedia page for cottagecore isnt really giving the impression cottagecore means wanting someone else to do the labor for you either

    Cottagecore[1] is an internet aesthetic and subculture centred on rural way of life.[2][3] The aesthetic centres on traditional and vernacular architecture, clothing, interior design and crafts. Cottagecore was first named on Tumblr in 2018[4] and is related to similar internet aesthetics including goblincore and dark academia. A subculture of Millennials and Generation Z, cottagecore developed as a response to economic pressures faced by young people; the aesthetic emphasises sustainability, agrarianism and slow living.[5]

    Agrarianism:

    Agrarianism is a social and political philosophy that advocates for rural development, a rural agricultural lifestyle, family farming, widespread property ownership, and political decentralization. Those who adhere to agrarianism tend to value traditional forms of local community over urban modernity. Agrarian political parties sometimes aim to support the rights and sustainability of small farmers and poor peasants against the wealthy, powerful and famous in society.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    Yeah, you apparently have not heard of or been on TikTok, I guess? Where the vast majority of cottagecore content is/was?

    The folks that I know that enjoy cottagecore aesthetics most are a married black lesbian couple

    Cool story bro

    Cause like, my first thought is that theres no reason you can't just have a cozy domestic life in a cottage with pretty wildflowers where you just do the labor yourself

    Yes, that's your first thought because you are so immensely priveleged that you have no conception of how expensive land and property are, and how expensive it is to have any infrastructure that goes out and supports a small number of people who live very far away from where most people live.

    Can you ... feed yourself and pay property taxes, and provide yourself with electricity and reasonably running water... by ... picking wildflowers?

    95% chance the answer is no, and, the 5% of cases where the answer is yes, are the cases where you have a considerable amount of money, assets, investments.

    You are idealizing a more extreme version of suburbia. And suburbia is a major reason why say the US is completely falling apart: Look up strongtowns maps of what parts of counties actually generate tax revenue for local and regional governments.

    Its the densest parts, the urban cores. Everybody else? They're drains on the system, they are subsidized by everyone else, they get a bunch of free handouts for being isolated and unproductive.

    This is the modern, more complex, less directly visible system we currently live under that extracts from the productive and funnels their productivity into paying for isolation that is still part of civilization, to be possible.

    I enjoy cottagecore aesthetically, though not as much as other aesthetic generes, and I'm more than happy to do my own labor 🤷🏻‍♂️

    I know you do sweetie, but the problem is you can't think very well, beyond the outer layer of what things just look like when you take a photo of them. I know you're happy to do your own labor, when that labor is trivial and essentially useless, and needs to be subsidized by the labor of many many others that you're not capable of conceptualizing.

    If you wanna try to do this, go be a homesteader.

    Buy some land out in the boonies, build a cottage, put in a well or rain catch system, figure out your own plumbing and septic system, set up your own system of generating electricity, figure out how to get internet out there. Oh and probably a road, too.

    And make sure to follow all government regulations while doing so, follow all codes, and don't be late on any tax bills, and keep having some kind of job you can do from out in the middle of nowhere.

    You're gonna need at least a million dollars, in cash, not financing, not funds that will suffer some kind of early withdrawal penalty if you try and use them, or, you're gonna have to be ok with ... no water, no electricty, or the home will have to basically be tiny. And you'll have to keep working an earning some kind of income.

    Its not my problem that you can't realize that cottages just are an element of English feudal agrarianism.

    You read the wikipages, you didn't make the conceptual linkage there, didn't realize one is subset of the other.

    Because the concept of actual hard labor doesn't exist in your experience, or your brain.

    You do not realize that you are fantasizing, being fairly delusional.

    Or, you do, and you don't care.

    Eitherway, I don't respect delulu.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Yikes, sorry for trying to invite conversation about our different perspectives lol, clearly that is not in the cards unless I feel like being personally attacked repeatedly 😅. Maybe I need to do a better job of using tone indicators to convey I'm not trying to start a fight when talking folks online, or just try to more proactively distance myself from the possibility of reading an antagonistic tone into my message. I do use "😅" a lot, maybe that comes across as passive aggressive.

    Yeah I like the idea of homesteading too, I see them as being closely related fantasies. Homesteading is just less of an aesthetic fantasy and more of a reality, but I see hokestreading as a lifestyle as being a component of the cottagecore fantasy. And no, I don't use tiktok, or tumbr, which is exactly what I meant by feeling like maybe I haven't seen the online spaces that created your resentment for the aesthetic. That resentment may be totally valid (for all I know those groups online suck shit and are super gross) taking it out on anyone you talk about cottagecore aesthetics with is less so; I am not those people on tiktok, believe it or not.

    I don't think I really understand your position, cottagecore is explicitly a fantasy. Isn't that the point of it? Why would land being unaffordable make it unreasonable to fantasize about having land? Thats why its a fantasy? I'll probably never actually own land, does that mean I'm not allowed to enjoy the idea of it either?

    Because the concept of actual hard labor doesn't exist in your experience, or your brain.

    Thats a really weird assumption given you don't know anything about me other than an internet comment. My last job was in the trades and regularly involved manual labor.

    You seem to be indicating that any kind of discussion where I can enjoy chatting with someone about the different way we see things probably isnt gonna happen; I hope you have a nice day, take care

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    I think the missing link that you two are talking past each other about is that there's a venn diagram with a lot of overlap between "cottagecore" and whatever the whole "tradwife" thing is called.

    They are both a fantasy, not a utopia.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Thats a fair point. Like I said, I haven't engaged much with people online around the cottagecore aesthetic, maybe if I had that crossover of the Venn diagram would have kinda poisoned the way I see cottagecore

    That being said, I do think I did a reasonable job of addressing what I was hearing from them and inviting conversation 😅 I made a concerted effort not to talk past them, and acknowledged I don't really know what those spaces online are like

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