no such thing as a bad abyss

"South African entrepreneur Phumla Makhoba is on a mission to solve the “global south housing crisis.” And she’s doing it by using clothing waste.

Her invention, Texiboard, is a material that combines fibers found in textile waste with lime cement to create a durable, affordable, and circular building material.

The result is a textured, white square, almost tile-like, that is created with recycled materials — not emission-generating wood or concrete.

“It can be used to make furniture, flooring, walls, or even your entire home,” Makhoba said in a video for social media account We Got Earth.

The first iterations of the Texiboard included colorful cotton threads that were compressed together, with multiple attempts to remove cracks and seams and perfect the ratios of size, shape, and material mass.

With her design firm, Studio People, Makhoba has been working since 2022 to perfect the TexiBoard. 

Makhoba has since created a solid panel, with shredded textile fiber and natural lime cement fully cured. Finally, it can be formed into a full sheet of building material.

Once realized, the Texiboard will confront the estimated 92 million tons of clothing waste generated around the globe each year. But it will also provide safe and stable housing that Makhoba says only 20% of South Africans can afford.

“Growing up, I saw two worlds: one with polished buildings, and one built from scrap,” she said in a video. “I always wondered, why do some people get homes that last and others get homes that leak?”

Now, the Texiboard design is available as an open-source resource, and Makhoba and her team host in-person workshops for locals living in shacks to learn how to build their own supportive and sustainable housing.

“Just having a roof isn’t enough,” Makhoba said. “A real home should protect you from the weather, work for your daily life, and not fall apart in five years.”

Her approach includes a full theory of change. Right now, Studio People is in the input process, building partnerships and funding to scale their operation. From there, they hope to develop a fully sustainable supply chain to manufacture and sell Texiboards and help build affordable housing for people in need.

Once that dream is realized, Makhoba outlines the tangible output of this work: Economically inclusive waste management, circular building materials, green jobs, and a sustainable housing and manufacturing market.

“Informal settlements can be transformed when we all work together,” she shares on the Studio People website. “Texiboard is the seed of innovation that will create updated trade jobs in the innovative building industry.”

Although the Texiboard is still being completely perfected, the goal is to provide a weather-proof, cost-effective, and circular way to house people by democratizing the act of building.

“Our goal is to create an egalitarian and sustainable urban environment, helping shack dwellers and youth out of poverty,” Studio People shared on LinkedIn.

“We empower the underdog, including people and businesses, to co-create solutions in our fight against the housing crisis, unsustainable building materials, and unemployment — one board at a time.”"

Things with a high craft per craft score are easier to just pick up and start, making them helpful if you have executive functioning issues. Of course it's *possible* to overthink anything, but high-scoring crafts don't tend to *require* extensive planning and preparatory work. I can just grab my spindle and some combed top and I'm immediately making yarn. These also can be easier to learn because you only need to get good at one thing instead of a whole portfolio of supplementary skills.

If you're considering picking up a new hobby, it's good to know everything it actually entails. You might love the idea of sewing, but if you hate ironing (or have accessibility barriers around it), it's likely going to be a frustrating hobby. If you can't sharpen a blade, certain types of woodworking will be extremely difficult. It helps to be aware going in of what you'll be spending the most time on so it doesn't come as a nasty surprise.

Utility is subjective (Not everyone needs a Ford F-150 for instance)

Utility is difficult to quantify (But for the sake of learning we'll assume it can be measured in utils)

Total Utility is the total amount of satisfaction or pleasure a person derives from consuming some specific quantity of a good or service are you kidding me right now what are you doing over there you you being a menace I'm trying to work I'm trying to get stuff done you just want pets obey them all the time stop it bill stop being bad just be good instead of being bad be good stop it stop it damn it damn it stop what do you want from me you're stuck in this spot that I can't grab you yeah I bet it is uncomfortable well guess what don't put yourself in a position where I have to keep doing this just be good ohh

https://www.youtube.com/user/billvicars

and here’s the link to the website he puts in his videos:

Not only is the conversation format immersive and helpful for learning the grammar, but the students make common mistakes which he corrects, mistakes I wouldn’t have otherwise know I was making.

He also emphasizes learning ASL in the way it’s actually used by the Deaf community and not the rigid structure that some ASL teachers impose in their classrooms

His lesson plans include learning about the Deaf community, which is an important aspect of learning ASL. Knowing how to communicate in ASL without the knowledge of the culture behind it leaves out a lot of nuances and explanations for the way ASL is.

Lastly, his lessons are just a lot of fun to watch. He is patient, entertaining, and funny. This good natured enthusiasm is contagious and learning feels like a privilege and not a chore

Context is important! Pole and sex work are inextricably linked, but there are distinctions between them. Strippers made this hobby what it is, and taught me what I know, and while I haven’t lived that life, I’m honoured to stand on their shoulders.

So. I have no business telling people not to collect wild plants/materials.

I do it all the time.

However.

The words "wildcrafted," and "foraged," even "sustainably harvested," are terrifying to see in an ad on Etsy or Instagram

There is a such thing as the honorable harvest where you ASK the plant if it is okay to take, with the intention of listening if the answer is NO. Robin Wall Kimmerer talked about this, She did not make it up, it is an ancient and basic guideline of treating the plants with respect.

Basically it is not wrong to use plants and other living things, even if this means taking their life. But you are not the main character. You have to reflect on your knowledge of the organism's life cycle and its role in the ecosystem, so you can know you are not damaging the ecosystem. You have to only take what you need and avoid depleting the population.

Mary Siisip Geniusz also talked about it in an enlightening way in her book Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do is Ask. She gave an example of a woman who was on an island and needed to use a medicinal herb to heal her injured leg or she would not survive the winter. In that situation she had to use up all of the plant that was on the island. This was permissible, even though it eliminated the local population, because she had to do it to save her life. But in return the woman had the responsibility to later return to the island and plant seeds of that plant.

And what makes me absolutely furious, is that there are a bunch of people online who have vaguely copied this philosophy of sustainability in a false and insulting way, saying "wildcrafted" or "foraged" materials to be all trendy and cool and in touch with nature, when it is actually just poaching.

If you are from a capitalistic culture the honorable harvest is very hard and unintuitive to learn to practice. I am not very good at it still. This is why it is suspicious if someone is confident that they can ethically and respectfully harvest wild materials with money involved.

So there's this lichen that is often called "reindeer moss." It looks like this:

It grows only a few millimeters a year.

This is "preserved" reindeer moss.

It is from Etsy, similar is also sold in many other online shops, many of which have the audacity to describe it as a "plant" for decorations and terrariums that needs no maintenance.

It is not maintenance-free, it is dead. It has been spray-painted a horrible shade of green. The people buying it clearly don't even know what it is. It is a popular crafting material for "fairy houses," whatever the hell those are. So is moss, also dead, spray-painted, and wild-harvested. Supposedly reindeer moss is harvested sustainably in Finland, where it is abundant, for the craft industry. However poaching of lichens and mosses is absolutely rampant.

It's even more upsetting because there's hardly any articles drawing attention to the problem. This one is from 1999. And the poaching is still going on.

There is a "moss" section on Etsy, and it is so upsetting

These mosses and lichens were collected from the wild. Most of the shops are in the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia, which are the major locations of moss and lichen poaching. There are some shops based in Appalachia selling "foraged" reindeer moss.

Reindeer moss may be abundant in Finland, but in Appalachia it should NOT be harvested to be sold on Etsy as craft supplies! Moss doesn't grow quickly. Big, healthy colonies like this took years to grow. Some of these shops have thousands of sales, all of bags and bags of moss and lichen, and thinking of how much moss and lichen that must be, I am filled with horror.

Clubmosses do not transplant well, and these ones have no roots. The buyers do not realize they have bought a dead plant because clubmoss stays green and pliable after it is dead.

This is especially awful because in Mary Siisip Geniusz's book she talked about clubmosses being poached so much for Christmas wreaths that they had almost disappeared from a lot of forests.

Personally, if the native species don't have enough food to feed on in the wild, to me that would be a better standard to measure the economic viability of harvesting lichen for other purposes with.

Yeah. Harvesting this stuff on industrial scale to be sold for arts and crafts is not acceptable.

One of these shops (with thousands of sales!) is selling BIRD FEATHERS

That is a FEDERAL CRIME

I'm not a snitch, but this shop I'm talking about is selling ORCHIDS. Uprooted, clearly pulled up from the wild, for people's terrariums. And slow-growing lichens. And mosses.

And they have thousands of sales.

One of their items includes bird feathers in the photos. In the USA even possessing the feathers of any wild bird, let alone selling them, is illegal.

I'm looking through etsy shops for anything that appears obviously poached/illegal.

There are so, so, so many listings of Usnea (old man's beard lichen) as a medicinal herb. And other lichens. I found someone selling PULMONARIA LOBATA of all things.

I'm thinking about how I can recognize when a plant is probably poached from Appalachia, but I can't recognize a plant that is probably poached from a faraway place.

This is going to sound crazy, but I sort of hate the houseplant business.

I don't hate houseplants as a concept. But a lot of house plants are tropical plants, desert plants, epiphytic plants, and other plants with narrow habitat requirements, and it creates a HUGE market for these plants in areas the plants don't live.

Not all of them are poached, but outside of a few very widely cultivated species, how do I know, especially if I don't know anything about the plant's native ecosystem?

Cacti, succulents, carnivorous plants, and orchids are all threatened by poaching. Even species that are cultivated in nurseries are heavily poached. And someone buying from California doesn't necessarily know that those "wild-collected" Goodyera pubescens from Kentucky are scarce enough that seeing dozens of them being sold on Etsy is a major red flag.

People think "oh, if it was illegal it would have been shut down/it wouldn't be for sale still". WRONG. There's tons of illegal plant, animal, and fungi remains for sale, often on cutesy websites like Etsy. It's especially rampant in the "gothic" aesthetic, which places great value on bones and real animal remains:

It shouldn't be up to you, the consumer, to do all the research and track down every bit of information to make sure what they're buying is actually respectfully and sustainably sourced, but often, it is, because it's really hard to regulate and track Internet-based businesses.

"It's just a few plants, it doesn't matter" - yes, it does. If it were only one person, I might understand, but the whole thing about businesses and capitalism is that they have a never-ending need, an infinite demand.

As a conservation ecology student I am begging people to think twice when you see this kind of thing. Don't take sellers at their word, and if they act cagey or give you non-answers or vague assurances, STOP and LEAVE. Better yet, report them. Take screenshots in case listings and pages get taken down, and report them to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, or the appropriate equivalent in your country - just google "(your area) report poaching". The US Fish and Wildlife Service has an online form, below:

Like, teenagers are daydreaming about One Direction? Of course they are--1D was the most successful boy band of the 2010s, and providing a vessel through which young girls can examine their own developing sexuality is (if viewed as positively as possible) what boy bands are for. And teenagers are daydreaming about being sold to hot boys against their will? Sure; the bodice ripper is a very old sub-genre, the appeal of which has been explained many times, and whcih isn't likely to go away any time soon. The thing that makes this weird is the fact that so many teenagers apparently looked at the squeaky-clean, clean-shaven, J-Crew-and-Hollister-clad young men on their bedroom posters and thought "Yeah, these guys look like they could be doing human trafficking. I don't feel the need to spend any time or worldbuilding justifying this to my audience."