Bit of both maybe? I know there’s solarpunkmemes, but it’s not super active. I do feel like I’d want a feel of the community talking crap rather than the broader Lemmy ecosystem. Got any recommendations of good communities? Maybe just subscribing to a couple will change up the vibes.

This is not a critique btw. More just idle banter.

Anyone else feel like this place is a bit sterile? Reddit, for all its faults (and there are many) just has a good meme game. This place is more wholesome but every now and then you want a bit of popcorn bullshit.

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.

OK I no longer know what we’re talking about but in the interests of not making things more heated than they already are, I’m just not going to respond further.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but an increasing number of recipe writers are using only weight based measurements. This is super handy because you just have a scale, add ingredients, and just tare as you need. The measurements are also more accurate because, eg, flour can be compacted, so “1 cup of flour” could vary by a lot depending on how you measure it.