#solarpunkreporting — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #solarpunkreporting, aggregated by home.social.
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@afewbugs @ratika @susankayequinn one of the most important beliefs of the #solarpunk community is that we need to be able to imagine better futures before we can reach them.
(fiction) writing is activism!
There's also a lot of non-fiction writing about what's already out there - with #solarpunkReporting !
If you'd like to explore how to write Solarpunk, I can recommend our podcast, @SolarpunkPrompts , with 15-minute episodes showcasing different communities building a better future.
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With that, we could do more with #solarpunkReporting , showing things like the Sierra Leone's emergency infrastructure created by grassroots, gynepunks from Calafou not as "outliers", not as "fleeting" or "whimsical", but as very real things that keep happening around the world DESPITE us refusing to give them place in our popular culture.
These things happen despite being unimaginable for most of us.
What is more #solarpunk than people creating a better world where others see no possibility?
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@TheFerridge @varelse @charlesroper I might be not be it's target audience, but for me it's important to say out loud: we do not need to wait until things break, until the status quo concedes or falls apart.
All my #solarpunk activism started not only to educate about the dangers, but to showcase all that is out there now, with #solarpunkReporting. KSR does not do that.
To the contrary, he specifically omits most of the work being done today in refugee camps, in independent infrastructure etc.
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@BrightFlame The "pre-solarpunk" is just a differentiation I saw someone use to put the emphasis on "no magical technologies, real communities today", as in: they're flawed, not utopian, and yet very inspiring :)
We have A LOT of #solarpunk activists, educators, makers at https://www.globalinnovationgathering.org/ , about some of whom I've written #solarpunkReporting stories.
Currently it's pretty hard to publish this language further, as especially grant-based orgs require dry, corporate / academic reports.
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@BrightFlame thank you! :)
I'm not against the fantastical Solarpunk, as it can exemplify quite a lot of things - especially social models - which are hard to show in realistic settings.
I just want more #solarpunkReporting and this pre-Solarpunk, showing what is already happening in communities around the world, but written in a language which doesn't obsess over innovations and entrepreneurs!
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https://app.jogl.io/project/1679/DIYSolarMobilePhoneCharger
A #DIY #solar charger for mobile phones built by Community Creativity For Development in #Uganda to help people in the Rhino #refugee camp
Remember the https://podcast.tomasino.org/@SolarpunkPrompts/episodes/the-electronics-graveyard and https://podcast.tomasino.org/@SolarpunkPrompts/episodes/the-refugee-camp episodes of @SolarpunkPrompts ? Those #solarpunk stories are happening right now, we just need to notice them.
#writing #solarpunkReporting #globalSouth #sustainability #africa #AfricanFuturism
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@varelse @guacamayan thank you!
If you're interested in analyzing speculative futures in depth, I gave a talk on how we see technology and communities in popular culture: https://livestream.com/internetsociety3/hope2020/videos/209149752 at the HOPE2020 conference.
Speaking recommendations, I'm on the side of realistic, near-future hope in Solarpunk with A LOT of reporting. I used to write a lot under #solarpunkReporting hashtag. There is a lot of good happening in the Global South that we don't see.
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@LightHiker @ginevra I am actually the guy who is all about showing the existing solutions, especially from the Global South! At some point I created #solarpunkReporting to help inspire people with real ideas.
There are organizations like Global Innovation Gathering, networking hackers and activists from the Global South and helping them build sth.
There is #appropedia and a lot of similar projects.
We just dont hear about them in the mainstream.
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@gem welcome to Mastodon and thank you for your work! :) Happy to learn about it!
I'm Pawel [read Pavew], here mostly working on bringing solarpunk closer to earth with #solarpunkReporting on real stories and creating and visions of communities facing the climate change with hope.
Together with @tomasino we're working on @SolarpunkPrompts , a podcast full of writing prompts specifically about that!
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@wordswithnima @tomasino I believe my Writing Exchange account actually started in a similar way!
https://writing.exchange/@alxd/101235661191134878 , https://writing.exchange/@alxd/101031127170834245 and #solarpunkReporting had some real stories to inspire.
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At least partially like https://globalinnovationgathering.org/blog/ , news from the Global South innovators and their communities, partially like the #solarpunkreporting hashtag here
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I'm slowly planning to start a blog focusing on #solarpunkReporting. Telling real stories, especially from the Global South in a #solarpunk way, seeing hope and patterns we can learn in the West in them.
I'm thinking going with a stand-alone blog and a medium.com mirror for bigger reach.
Do you have any recommendations, anything I should look into?
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#SolarpunkReporting #solarpunk
Do you know ArXiv, the open pre-print database of scientific articles?
Well, there's also https://info.africarxiv.org/ for African research:
AfricArxiv is a free, open source and community-led digital archive for African research. We provide a non-profit platform for African scietists to upload their working papers, pre-prints, accepted manuscripts (post-prints), and published papers. We also provide options to link data and code, and for article versioning.
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#SolarpunkReporting or maybe #reporting in general:
Have you heard about Solutions Journalism? Its main idea is to step beyond the regular investigative journalism and show solutions to the problem which worked in other places.
It combats news fatigue and allows people to see that they _can_ do something. It gives hope where regular journalism just exhausts us with a constant stream of bad news.
https://storytracker.solutionsjournalism.org/
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Thank you!
Im afraid my alxd.org has much fewer Solarpunk blogposts than Id like, but theres one big coming.
#solarpunkreporting may be a much better candidate for a wiki though :)
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@CommandoJugendstil hey! I'm a wannabe writer researching how technology is presented in the culture and trying to change it with https://glider.ink/
I also work with a lot of hackers from the Global South and I post their stories at #SolarpunkReporting
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Makerspaces in crisis zones are already helping people around the world: Puerto Rico, Haiti, Nepal.
Instead of waiting for expensive western supplies in makeshift tents, the survivors can get tools and start building new houses and infrastructure immediately. This not only makes the help /cheaper/ but also allows the people to feel more empowered and in control, less prone to long-term traumas.
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European colonialism left Africa with a lot of standards unadjusted to local needs.
Dress codes of schools all around Sub-Saharan Africa require young girls to have straight hair. The problem is that Africans have naturally curly hair, requiring lengthy and expensive straightening, putting a burden on poor families and enforcing white beauty standards.
Mugethi Gitau gave a great talk about it: https://re-publica.com/en/session/politics-natural-hair
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After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 a group of citizen scientists called Safecast decided to create open source / hardware Geiger counters with GPS. They used them to create an independent map of radiation in Japan.
Soon after, the Iraqi hackers from Fikra Space proceeded to do the same in Baghdad to raise awareness about the depleted uranium used in the ammo from the last war.
https://blog.safecast.org/2014/04/safecasting-iraq-open-data-to-open-doors/
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@himselforama thanks! I've written some toots on #solarpunk before, please check the first #SolarpunkReporting ones.
I've spoken with the very creators of the blogposts you link to and I don't agree with them. They're focused on the West and aesthetic so much, while ignoring all the work people have already done in the Global South. We need diversified Solarpunk with lots of conflicts and different approaches! Utopia should not be static!
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An anarchist collective https://calafou.org in Catalonia houses a DIY Bio #gynaecology group #GynePunk:
http://www.makery.info/en/2015/06/30/gynepunk-les-sorcieres-cyborg-de-la-gynecologie-diy/
They are working on open hardware gynaecological tools and emergency kits, trying to decolonize a medical field which wasn't created _for_ women.
Their blog: http://gynepunk.tumblr.com/
There's a scientific paper about them: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14680777.2016.1218353
Photo: Paula Pin / Creative Commons
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In 2014, when Sierra Leone was hit by the Ebola outbreak, three local software developers kept the country's infrastructure working by rewriting it to #FLOSS. They saved hundreds of thousands lives when companies like Google and IBM backed off, calling the project too risky.
And their own recollection of the events with some technical descriptions:
https://medium.com/idtlabs/how-open-source-software-helped-in-the-fight-against-ebola-788bb3ca2bf0
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As a wise Egyptian hacker once told me:
If #solarpunk stays focused on the West, it may end up being a greenwashed imperialism. Imagine US or China forcing smaller countries to buy only their solar panels, because other are not green enough. Another engine for geopolitical exploitation.
We need to encourage all the countries and cultures to dream up local visions and share the knowledge to create #sustainability without imperialism.
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I'm afraid that #solarpunk is too western, white and focused on fiction to make a change. People prefer fetishizing #burningman aesthetics to noticing the real changemakers around the world.
Have you heard about http://globalinnovationgathering.org ? Its a network of hackers from Africa, Middle East, South America and Southeast Asia. They do things some solarpunk writers only imagine, but there is little interest in that in the West.
Why not start #SolarpunkReporting ?