Aspiring To Be Belle

1. Promise everything.

2. Piss off everyone.

3. Deliver nothing.

We’ll have to make it ourselves, and we’ll have to help each other make it. That’s why it is solarpunk. 

Some resources to consider creating or joining or doing:

Repair cafes - create or join your local repair cafe! Repair stuff, learn how to repair stuff, teach others how to repair stuff.

Map of Makerspaces - make some things! learn how to make some things! teach others how to make some things!

Community Garden Map (note that this is US-only, and not a complete list) - join a local community garden

Support your local farmers / local economy (US only link)

Support or create a local Food Not Bombs chapter

Support or create a local Food Not Lawns chapter

Grow food in 5 gallon buckets

Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity (as a bonus you can learn extremely practical skills)

Volunteer via 350.org to help the environment / the planet / the place we live and depend on

Excellent-and-still-growing wiki from reddit’s awesome r/zerowaste community - great resource to learn how to live more lightly on the earth

Spread the word about solarpunk, especially to engineering students. Show them projects like Open Source Ecology - Global Village Construction Set and Bridges for Prosperity 

Learn how to Patch a Hole, Mend a Seam, and Fix a Hem

Learn how to repair a hole in the sole of a shoe

Learn some basics on passive solar design - clever use of the sun can create extremely energy efficient homes and buildings. You can use these principles to save on energy bills, even if you’re renting.

Free USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision - cut down on personal food waste! Learn how to safely preserve food. Very useful if you suddenly harvest / purchase for crazy cheap in season / dumpster dive a ton of perishable food.

Donate to One Acre Fund, which provides training and capital to farmers (making them more productive and pulling them out of poverty) in various east African countries

Donate to Bridges to Prosperity, which provides technical expertise, money, and volunteers, to help local people build and maintain their own footbridges in extremely isolated rural areas 

joining r/solarpunk, and sharing links/ideas/art/music with the community. Also, upvoting stuff for greater visibility. There’s over 900 members!

Replant scraps from your produce

Graft fruit-bearing branches onto ornamental trees in your area

Turn plastic waste into pretty much any plastic thing you need, in your garage, with machines built out of cheap and accessible parts

Make your own paper out of recycled paper or cardboard

Build a composter or a wormery

Harvest rainwater

Mod your toilet to flush gray water (used sink/shower water, or even that rainwater you’re harvesting)

Build a solar collector on the cheap

Build a wind turbine on the cheap

Build a hydroelectric water wheel on the cheap

Get internet access without going through cable companies using cheap, low-tech equipment

Make your own beer, cheese, soap, wine… really anything you can make rather than buy is a success!

"The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.

The LORD is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion. Selah."

- Psalm 9:15-16 (KJV)

"Let it work,

For ’tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petard"

- Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4, lines 228-230

"Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad."

- El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (then known as Malcolm X), December 4, 1963.

"I just can't help believing,

Though believing sees me cursed.

For belief ignores the heathen's

Day by day sigh, 'Even worse'.

But for all we are receiving

There's an even's key to turn.

You was the generation that bought more shoes

And you get what you deserve."

Three things to note. He alleges one location for one of the camps is Greenville, South Carolina. In reality, two founding members of the John Birch Society lived in the vicinity of Greenville, namely Dr. Thomas Parker (then head of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a group that thought the AMA was too left-wing, despite the AMA's opposition to socialized medicine) and Roger Milliken (textile magnate and Republican fundraiser, who lived in Spartanburg County next door). Greenville is also home to Bob Jones University, a noted far-right college, which helped sponsor an event with Edwin Walker and Billy James Hargis. (One noted Bircher, Stuart Crane, would later join Bob Jones as a faculty member.) In short, there are a number of powerful right-wingers in the area of one of these camps...which debunks the idea of them being used for right-wingers.

Second, Goff refers to his book on "Psycho-political Warfare". The book in question was originally written by one L. Ron Hubbard. Goff just redistributed it and took credit for it. (Needless to say, the FBI didn't think much of the document. Hoover and the FBI were strongly anti-communist, but even they felt Goff and Hubbard were being unrealistic.)

IN A CONVERSATION with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last August, President Donald Trump noted that Ukraine hadn’t held elections since the Russian invasion, asking whether elections are called off during a war. Before Zelensky could respond, Trump added: “Oh, that’s a good thing.” Five months later, Trump mused apophatically about canceling elections out of disdain for Democrats. Just days after that, in an interview with Reuters, Trump reflected with his typical braggadocio that, given his great success as president, “we shouldn’t even have an election” this November. The sheer number of times Trump brought up canceling elections forced White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to clarify that the president was only joking.

But in light of Trump’s repeated affronts to democracy—including January 6th and his sustained lies about the results of the 2020 election—we are forced to take these remarks seriously. His comments show that he does not understand the essential place elections hold in our constitutional order and, in doing so, reveal a man unfit for the office he holds.

If and when Trump, believing he will lose control of Congress and face a third impeachment, tries to suspend November’s congressional elections, voters need to remember that Americans have held elections through national and international upheavals far more worrisome than anything the forty-seventh president can cite.

In 1862, in the midst of the Civil War that killed as many Americans as every other conflict in the nation’s history combined, Abraham Lincoln did not try to suspend the country’s congressional elections. Nor in 1864, when he ran for a second presidential term against Union General George B. McClellan, did he defy the country’s electoral laws and traditions.

Similarly, in 1898, during America’s war with Spain, William McKinley never tried to call off America’s congressional elections. And, despite warning against the dangers posed to the country’s democratic and economic systems by “radical” Democrats led by William Jennings Bryan, McKinley did not try to block the presidential election in 1900. Since there were no polls to encourage McKinley’s hope of winning, he simply believed Americans would not abandon their regard for traditional political institutions by electing Bryan. He, of course, was right.

'goon' -linguistic drift gave her a new meaning. i hope her new life is good for her. i miss her.

'henchman' -too gendered. can be shortened to 'hench' in a pinch, but lacks punch.

'servant' -too domestic to apply to all those who serve evil.

'underling, subordinate' -this one only works if they get off on being beneath you and/or you don't properly pay your workers.

'associate' -this one's good for grizzled mercenaries or lone agents but doesn't work good for broad swathes of an organization.

'slave' -same as underling but more intense. really fun for some of the group. unsavory for others in a way that limits the scope of the thing.

'thrall' -only really applies if you're brainwashing them and that's not something i've learned how to do en masse yet

'flunky, toady, stooge, lackey' -these are just insulting, and that isn't conducive to a healthy work environment. imagine going to work and your job title is 'stooge'.

'acolyte' -works for those that worship you, but again. lacks the scope.

'supporter, follower' -unspecific and vague

'assistant, helper, aide' -not sinister at all. just means you're doing things for me. swagless in this manner. could be good if used to describe someone who's so clearly more that as a way to emphasize their obedience via understatement, but that's only useful for a few members of the organization. and even then, 'associate' works better.