• 105 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: December 9th, 2023

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  • My point is this kind of device is being narrativized as a military weapon but if you take a step back and tilt your view a bit it is actually the most solarpunk thing ever.

    You don’t have to just power weapons with all that portable power and you also don’t have to leverage the minimally invasive, stealthy nature of the device only to the aims of war. There are a million other uses, especially having to do with conducting scientific research with advanced instruments in rugged conditions that would otherwise require something far more invasive like a gas generator to power or would flat out not be feasible.

    Also electronic music performances I imagine will be able to get a lot more absurd and exploratory in staging with this kind of technology.


  • Please read the article, it is Aeon, I have rarely read an Aeon article that didn’t make me think differently in an interesting way even if I didn’t agree with the thrust of it.

    The point isn’t to deny the damage invasive species can set off in an ecosystem, the point is to recognize how easy it is to see conservation as a war against invasive species, which is not only bad science it also leads into reductive patterns of thinking that fail to understand that even as an invasive species is intruding upon an ecosystem it is becoming part of that ecosystem in some way. Once the invasive species has intruded, the solution can never be as simple as “delete the new stuff and go back to the old version!”, that is how software works not ecosystems. We must grapple with the new reality and begin to understand how our empathy must extend to these creatures invading the ecosystems we love even as we seak to mitigate the processes of damage they can accelerate.

    Obviously, it is complicated right? This article doesn’t pretend it isn’t, so I definitely recommend giving it a read! Aeon articles are kind of my gold standard for brainfood lately, they rarely miss.