𓃩 Guava Goblin 𓃩

Primarily, people do two things: burn it, and buy preground stale shit.

Buy whole bean, and grind just what you use for that cup. And be generous. I can't give you an exact amount, I have an antique hand crank grinder that holds exactly enough for two cups, and unlike electric grinders, it all comes out at the same consistency. It was $8!

The water should be hot but not boiling-I don't know what exact temperature, but my kettle makes a certain sound when it's perfect. And each kettle is different. A programmable electric kettle can make this easier.

This does mean that the standard percolator machines will just make burned ass every time, even if you use good coffee. Now, espresso and turkish coffee has some other magic going on that makes them work, but I don't know what's going on there.

I prefer a pretty fine grind using a pourover with a canvas filter, the paper ones absorb a lot of flavor.

And honestly? I usually get the cheapest whole bean dark roast. It's all good when made right.

Today I want to talk about one Solarpunk-thingie, that kinda annoys me - and has to do with a lot with how real-life politians deal with talking about technology and especially energy technologies.

And this is the following fact:

We already have the technology! This is not some SciFi shit!

See, the issue within the politics tends to be, that a lot of folks go: "Oh, yeah, we would LOVE to go renewable. But right it is not possible! Once the technology gets there, we will totally go 100% renewable!"

And basically a lot of Solarpunks online are also waiting for the technology to get there. Again, there is sadly a big group of folks who technically love the aesthetics of Solarpunk and also generally the idea of a Solarpunk future, but do not engage with it over it. And they usually will also wait for technology to get there.

But it already is.

Let me talk about it.

We can produce enough renewable energy

In a way I get it. If you are not working in any fields related to this - and do not follow science news - you might just not know how fast the renewable energy field is moving right now. 10 years ago, yes, a lot of countries would have been able to go 100% renewable, but not all. It depended basically on the climate and environment. Partly because the photovoltaic (what most people call solar, but us engineers use solar for something a bit different) cells were just not as efficient in certain climates. And while the mix of wind and hydro power could do A LOT for many countries, it could not for all.

However, that was mainly before China really pulled all the stops for their research. No, it is not only China, but holy shit, China's research in terms of photovoltaic is insane. If you follow this, you basically will see a new breakthrough - often from China - every couple months. And by now, the efficiency of photovoltaic is insane. Sure, it might not make sense as the only source of energy in places were you basically do not get any sunlight for half the year, but outside of that? It is so darn good.

Other than that, we are really darn good with wind energy (which to my opinion is still the best way of producing energy) and hydro energy.

Don't get me wrong: We can totally improve those things further and further. But we can absolutely power the world on renewables right now. We do not need fossile fuels right now!

We can build climate-friendly transport!

I will remind y'all once more: Electric cars are definitely better than gas powered cars, for those people and situations in which cars are needed. (Read: For emergency services, certain forms of service work who need to transport stuff outside of the rail network, and probably also some people who live very isolated for certain reasons.) However, they are still cars and suck for this reason, if you do not REALLY need them.

Still, we are fucking good by now in building electric cars and for those scenarios where they are needed. Heck, by now in my city pretty much all public transport runs electric, including the busses. And no, they are not tram busses.

And yeah, turns out, we figured out how to build railways more than 200 years ago, and we figured out how to electricize them in 1881. Yes. 1881. 18 in the front. Almost 150 years ago. Sure, back then we were not that good with it, but we managed to build one for intracity transport that worked - and worked for long.

Yes, admittedly, there are some forms of transport that right now we might indeed need fossil fuels for. Right now, we have no method to fly planes and helicopters in a way that is both mass-producable and renewable. And the same is with transcontinental transport via the ocean.

Yeah, sure. We can technically just go fully low tech and just sail. That works. Heck, while it is about half as quick as modern ways to transport over the ocean, it is feasible. However, we just cannot move the amounts of cargo we might need to move with sailing. There are people figuring this out (partly through creating much better sails that work for MUCH BIGGER ships) but yeah, we are not there yet.

Still, a) a lot of the intercontinental stuff we technically do not need to transport (most of it is using cheap quasi-slave labor to save money), and b) that should not stop us from just doing sustainable on-land transport which we can do.

We also know how to build a better society

Now, a lot of the folks going for the Solarpunk aesthetics rather than philosophy are quite often very mistrustful of both anarchism and communism - or heck, just socialism. They often have drunken the capitalist cool-aid of capitalism being the "only system that works". But here is the thing: It doesn't.

Sure, there are versions of capitalism that would work a whole lot better than the Chicago-flavored one, but it will never really work - especially in regards to saving the environment. I talked about that a lot before.

But here is the thing. We know how it works better. We know how to build a better society. We know how to make economics work better. We know how to make better schools. We know how to build better cities. We know how to prevent at least a lot of wars. We know how to make society safer for kids. We know how to make healthier families. We know how to make medicine as a system work better. We know it all.

Heck, we have known how to make schools that are better in every way since the early 20th century - so more than a hundred years. This proposed school system since has been proofen time and time again in studies to be better for kids, and better in terms of education. But do we use them? No.

Again, politicians love to go: "We would love to change things, but we do not have a better system." But it is not true. We know how to do it better.

Same with the police and prison and stuff. We know how to do it better.

But right now, a) a lot of the stuff works in the favor of those who hold most power (aka the billionaires), b) a lot of people just do not like the idea of changing stuff majorly (which makes politicians who want change unpopular), and c) politicians also would need to fund the change - and that is going to be hard.

So, yeah. Change would be hard.

But it is not because we do not know how to do better.

so i made this, and i was like "aww yeahhh such a funny animal"

and then a second image popped up in my head

what if they acted like dogs?

tag to provide a welcome

break for travellers!

sit down and shut up because I'm about to learn you a thing

This:

is the ORIGINAL polyamory pride flag. Jim Evans created it in 1995 in fucking MS Paint. Not using hearts was an intentional choice to: avoid stepping on the leather pride flag's toes, allow people to use it without immediately outing themselves to those not in the know, and be easily input into MS Paint. The infinity heart symbol did not exist at the time and certainly wasn't available in MS motherfucking Paint. The color symbolism is blue for honesty, red for love, black⚫ in solidarity for those that cannot be out to the world at large, and gold for the high value of each relationship. sources (x, x)

There are valid complaints that people want a pride flag that does advertise what they are, and that this design is hard on the eyes. However. Many polyamorous people still use this flag to represent themselves, most of them 35+ years old. As a personal favor to me, please do not say you hate this flag. Say the colors are too bright till you're blue in the face, sure. But to openly hate this flag is to disparage your predecessors and denounce your history.

The earliest polyamory pride flag to incorporate the infinity heart symbol that I could find actually made its debut on tumblr in 2016. The infinity heart was established as a polyamory pride symbol by this time. ratlab-art intentionally kept the original color symbolism, while using hues generally considered a little more pleasant to look at.

This one, obviously, set the precedent for numerous other iterations of the same idea -- tweaking the colors, swapping the pi for the infinity heart. I will not be posting all of them, because I doubt I could track them all down anyway. The icon I currently use on this blog is one such iteration. But this one uniquely puts the black stripe in the middle, which does make for a nice contrast with the gold.

and of course

This is the "new poly flag" designed by Red Howell for the polyamproud online vote, which took place in 2022. They call it the "tricolor polyamory pride flag" (presumably, not to distinguish it from the other established flags, but to distinguish it only from the others that were in their run-off) Its symbolism is as follows: the triangle ▶️points forward for progress and is off-center to represent the non-traditional nature of polyamory, white⚪ represents possibility, blue for honestly, magenta for love, purple for unity in the community, gold for perseverance, and obviously the heart for love.

It has garnered controversy, because they kind of... openly disparaged every previous polyamory flag and claim theirs is the one true poly flag. They do still say you can use any flag you like, but the whole vote was predicated on the assumption that no one wanted the existing designs, and no pre-existing designs were included in the vote. And that it was bad to have variants of the same flag, even though you see that with many pride flags, including the rainbow flag. Many old school polyams still don't know this design, let alone that there was a single vote years ago, which they missed. However. This flag has quickly become a popular design, especially among the younger generation. So if you would be so kind, please do not say you hate this flag. Say you're frustrated with how the process of choosing it happened, by all means. But to openly hate this flag is to disparage the next generation and sever yourself from new directions in the community.

finally,

A couple of honorable mentions made by Em Essex in 2019 and Molly Colleen Bennett Wilvich in 2020, respectively. They don't get full write-ups, but they're an additional couple of the more unique (without being downright obscure) flag designs.

Jewish baby named Edgardo Mortara is seemingly about to die in Bologna, 1851

Catholic nanny secretly baptises him to save his soul, which she’s not exactly the kind of authority who can do that, but w/e, it’s interpreted by the church as valid later

Kid survives

1857 her secret gets out, a baptising makes a kid a Catholic according to the Church and a Catholic can’t be raised in a non-Catholic household in the Papal States, so the church authorises the police to kidnap Edgardo from his family

Raised personally by Pope Pius IX, Jewish family not allowed to take him back due to Church doctrine, this action destroys the family with grief and despair

This case gets international infamy with the Pope not understanding why everyone’s shiting on him for doing this, including allies

Emperor Napoleon III shifts from opposing Italian unification to supporting it as a direct consequence

Bologna falls the next year, 1859

Kingdom of Italy forms 1861

By 1870 Rome is lost to the Italians and the Papal States are no more

(Edgardo Mortara goes on to become Father Mortara)

The most infamous of these cases was the Finaly affair. Two Jewish children in France, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were placed in a Catholic nursery in 1944 in anticipation of their parents being deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. Their aunt, Marguerite Fischel, survived the war and went to find the boys so she could take them to live with her. However, the nun who had custody of the boys, Antoinette Brun, adamantly refused to give them up, reportedly saying that “The Jews are not grateful”

What followed was a years long custody battle where despite being repeatedly ordered by courts all over Europe to return the boys, Brun took them to many different countries and hid them, with the support and help of other nuns and priests. It was suspected at the time, and later confirmed by documents released in 2020, that Pope Pius XII had supported the effort to keep the boys away from their surviving family and have them be raised Catholic.

Thankfully, after negotiations between a sympathetic cardinal in France and the chief Rabbi of Paris, the boys were finally recovered and reunited with their aunt.

I wish I could say that the phenomenon of the Catholic Church kidnapping children and keeping them away from their families for the purposes of forcefully raising them Catholic is unique to Jews, but it’s not. From the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, the Church ran hundreds of residential schools in the US and Canada where indigenous children were kidnapped from their homes and forced into these cruel and inhumane “schools”. The children were forbidden from speaking their own languages or practicing their own cultures and religions, their hair was cut, and they were subject to emotional, verbal, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse. Many of the children died due to malnutrition or medical neglect, their bodies buried like dogs beside the schools. The Catholic Church was not the only Church to participate in this, but they’ve been the most reluctant to fully acknowledge and apologize for it. It was only in 2022 that Pope Francis apologized on behalf of the Catholic Church for their part, but some people found the apology inadequate.