…harvests reflected sunlight hitting the back of the device, offering an unconventional route to producing higher energy yields for less space and cost.

Less cost seems probable. Less space really does not. Gonna probably need some mirrors to reflect onto that back surface, and it’s still going to require the same amount of incident area of solar radiation.

Mirrors are pretty cheap, though. So seems like a win.

Absolutely. Lots of societies have used passive heating and cooling systems, well-suited to local climates. And we could learn a lot from them to help decrease our energy use.

There’s a lot of places you can build (partially) underground to take advantage of relatively stable ground temperature and natural insulation, too. Ain’t just fictional hobbits that lived in holes in the ground.

Correct. The ground is a MASSIVE heat sink, but can only absorb and transmit heat so quickly (how much thermal conductivity it has; just the mathematical reciprocal of insulation/resistance). Having a large contact area and/or water helps a lot. If you can get down to the ground’s natural/ambient water table, it’ll conduct a lot better than dry dirt and rock (not to mention that evaporation can help with sufficient air flow).

If you make use of flowing water, probably it’s just going to be a matter of the temperature of the source of water, as it’ll likely eclipse (depending on rate and volume of flow) what gets absorbed by the ground. Unless it’s a closed loop, in which case you’re essentially just increasing the surface area of ground you’re transmitting to (and you’ll need to take advantage of convective flows like with the air, or you’ll have to actively pump to keep the flow going).

I know a guy who made his own thongs out of the treads of old tires and some simple straps. He said they were comfortable as hell and had lasted him like thirty years. I wonder if we can extend that to more complicated designs with creative, alternative, recycled materials (and corresponding methods of construction) to do something between that and the masterfully crafted boots in the OP.

Leather is obviously a very physically suitable material and has been used for millennia. But I’d like to come up with stuff that’s inexpensive, easy, and doable by folks without a lot of wealth, intensive years of practice, apprenticeship, etc. Who cares if they can’t be used to climb the highest mountains, withstand a monsoon, and last for a decade? If we can build it out of stuff you can find in your garage, a thrift or fabric store, and a recycle bin, and put a good few hours of work into making something that’ll protect you without being monstrously uncomfortable or otherwise destroying your feet, I’d be good with something that’d last a year or so (maybe even a few months) and be usable for walking down the street to the store. Then a pair of normal, commercial shoes could be worn for fancy and important stuff and would undergo less wear.

I have a hard time understanding what they are “crusading” about. I believe they don’t know either

Pretty sure it’s just enhancing and absolutely securing their own power over others. Seems pretty simple, really: whatever vector you can use to legally, extra-legally, or even illegally crush those who don’t want to be ruled by you, foment hate and fear against them, take away their resources, and just altogether put them at your absolute mercy, you take.

Oh. I’m also talking about the right in general (liberals), not just the nominally conservative ones. Haven’t met a liberal yet with any power who’s not threatened by even the chance that leftist ideas will be realized. Those that aren’t conservatives just don’t seem to feel like it’s quite as inevitable (why would it be when they co-opt leftist ideas and movements and funnel them into liberalism, making sure avenues like the Democratic Party are as radical as people can get), so they’re more content to use legal and general economic methods to subvert, control, and starve us…at least most of the time (but then, there’s always shit like election fraud like they pull against the Green Party, though).

Somewhere between anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism, with a strong dose of social ecology. Small communities—however sparsely (rural) or closely (urban) packed—governed horizontally through consensus models, and federating with one another for larger projects and to form responsive and resilient decentralized networks of distribution. (I’m not limiting “community” here to the strictly geographical interpretation of a communal neighborhood, though that’s certainly one form; others would be worker-owned-and-self-managed cooperative enterprises, recreational clubs of various kinds, etc.)

Find ways to build successful but non-growth/non-profit-centered industries with modern technology but without the expectations of rampant consumerism, and with governance models strongly influenced by more horizontal and matrilineal societies, past and present. If we can’t do it and keep smart phones, then sorry: ditch the smart phones. If we can’t do it and keep modern medicine, then prioritize refining the model so we can.

Very true. And this doesn’t even mention rape and other sexual abuse/violence. If all we focus on is them murdering people, we’re already ignoring forms of violence and harm that are heavily weighted toward non-cis-male demographics, are commonly ignored and erased, and cause enormous amounts of pain and suffering.

While murder is obviously the worst of acute instances of violence in that it is the act which can never be healed from or undone, police do orders of magnitude more violent harm every day if you take a broader look, and we must resist attempts to ignore that.

I do take exception to this being said by someone in the exchange:

And I think that loss is exacerbated by the fact that these are women who are killed by the same institutions that are designed to protect them.

These institutions—especially the police, but the legal system more generally as well—were absolutely never designed to protect women. Or any other people other than capitalists and politicians, for that matter. Any other nominal protection they do is incidental, and should also be scrutinized carefully with a skeptical eye as likely mythological. We really, really, really need to stop saying shit like this. Yesterday. In having a conversation about improving matters, do not propagate the very propaganda that serves directly to make it worse. And push back on it every time you do hear/see it.

“One man’s wild dream.” Bleh. Flowery words for yet another bunk propertarian sea-steading project. I mean, he was literally planning to mine the shit out of the ocean floor and sell away more of the ecosystem to the capitalist market in order to create his Utopia. At least there was some acknowledgment of that at the very end.

Very glad the opportunistic scientific exploration happened along with it, though.

That’s funny, because it literally does work in many places. You might want to refine your idea of how everything works, since you are simply wrong. 🤷

It’s good…so long as we follow the advice of that last section: “Prosecute Them All”. If it’s used instead to distract from the ongoing crimes of other parties and other politicians—such as the fascist currently at the helm—then I couldn’t care less, and I think we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be distracted by it while there are much more important things to focus on.

The worst of Trump’s crimes—the ones that did serious, material harm to working-class people—aren’t being touched by this, just as they weren’t touched by the farcical impeachments the Democrats facilitated. And that’s because they, themselves, are happily engaged in the same crimes, as they have been all along.

Sure, bring out your popcorn or whatever when you’re relaxing at home and have nothing better to worry about. But during the day, put all the energy you can into what we MUST do to turn things around: put an end to state warfare, ongoing climate destruction, and the state violence and repression that keeps us from making progress on everything else.

Also:

And that brings us to the real double standard here. Trying to overturn an American election is the kind of crime the Justice Department takes seriously. Extrajudicially slaughtering scary Muslims in a foreign country, even ones with US citizenship, is not.

Attacks carried out on marginalized communities—carried out just like the Jan 6 Washington DC attack was, but in cities and towns everywhere else on a monthly basis at least—also are not taken seriously. Jan 6 was one of MANY, but only when the halls of power see a tiny inkling of a (pretty pathetic) threat does it matter to politicians and their liberal fans. Not okay.

EDIT: sigh. Blockquotes broken by some Lemmy update.