Solarpunk Crow

Across the country, judges increasingly are sending defendants to rehab instead of prison or jail. These diversion courts have become the bedrock of criminal justice reform, aiming to transform lives and ease overcrowded prisons.

But in the rush to spare people from prison, some judges are steering defendants into rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

The programs promise freedom from addiction. Instead, they’ve turned thousands of men and women into indentured servants.

The beneficiaries of these programs span the country, from Fortune 500 companies to factories and local businesses. The defendants work at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Oklahoma, a construction firm in Alabama, a nursing home in North Carolina.

A lot of environmental damage is reversible if we act. We’ve got a lot of success stories like this actually. A lot of formerly endangered species have come back, fish have returned to American rivers, the ozone layer is being restored.

Throughout the year now, you'll find a vast array of plants. There is a mix of 🌾 native grasses 🌾, along with so many flowering natives, brushes, shrubs. The Shrubby St. John's Wort popped last year, and hopefully there should be more blooming this summer. Last year, there was also what I think is Wild Bergamot/Bee-Balm growing along one of the property boundaries; so, I'm looking forward to seeing if that comes back this year. There's Wild Ginger I never planted, along with other surprises that have come up in the forms of Strawberries, Dew Berries, Wild Garlic, and Wild Spinach. You'll find Virgin's Bower vines, Thistles, Toothworts, Asters, Fleabane, cute little Seedbox flowers, Wild Violets, Dandelions, Flags, and Goldenrods. There's even been a Mustard patch this year, though I didn't plant it (it must have been a gift from the birds). There are wildflowers growing alongside my ornamental flower gardens, swaths of sweet-smelling Clover peppered here and there (and there and here), Bluebells and Morning Glories basking in the sunshine.

And, most importantly, there are birds, frogs, bees, butterflies, dragonflies, lizards, squirrels, spiders — wildlife everywhere, everyday. We even have a resident groundhog duo. 🦋🐸🐞🐦🐌🦆🐛🦉🐝🦗

am i treating the other person like it's their first day in the real world and need to be taught what to think, or am i doing the basic decent thing and assuming they have put some amount of thought into their existing beliefs with which i must contend and out-reason?

am i advocating for something, or am i just trying to make this other person feel small or stupid?

in the process of this discussion, have i actually made the case that what i'm advocating for will improve the other person's life in a material way?

and if the answer to some or all of these is "no," what you are doing is venting, preaching, or otherwise not helping to make a persuasive case for your beliefs. as we get closer to the midterms in november, it's going to be important to convince and persuade people to support various issues, and the first thing to do is not enter into those conversations with the attitude that all americans are temporarily embarrassed socialists who just need to be lectured about their own moral turpitude until they agree with me. contrary to popular belief within a not-insignificant subset of the internet, persuasion is not capitulation, it's just politics. if people don't see you as someone who genuinely has their best interests at heart, they will eye you and everything you're espousing with suspicion at best and outright anger at worst. and hostility and grandstanding doesn't convince anyone who isn't already on your side! so once again, i really gotta urge people to try to be thoughtful about the language and rhetoric they use to communicate their platforms to others. use accessible language to advocate for policies in a way that meets folks where they're at and assumes their best intentions. most importantly, again, don't treat people like they're stupid - treat them like you're trying to help them. because ultimately, you are.

I wanted to last year but I 'never got round to it'. I kill a lot of plants (not on purpose. ADHD and constant watering is hard, and sometimes it's just me confused as fuck about why I suddenly have x thing happening to my leaves) and kind of felt it was hopeless anyway.

Then I was reading your posts, and how you were seeing biodiversity in even small little hopeful changes. And I was like. Hey. Even if I do kill the plants. They will feed insects for a little, while they survive, and after, I can put them in my compost pile and they will feed more insects, and the flowers (if I get any) will feed bees (which are my special children) and so, even if it doesn't give me food, and even if they die, it might be worth it to try.

I never ate the cilantro. Turns out my flatmate has the soap gene. But it flowered like CRAZY and there were SO many happy pollinators.

I ate so many green onion shoots. The bulbs I still haven't pulled because they just keep giving me shoots to eat.

The mint is going HAM and also the insects loved the flowers.

The cucumber plants went absolutely APESHIT and produced flowers ALL SUMMER, and they were BEAUTIFUL, and I couldn't walk outside without a bee or, occasionally, a butterfly dropping by. It's STILL FLOWERING in NOVEMBER in PHILLY and now I have ladybugs and fireflies. FIREFLIES! I didn't see a single one last year and now they love my balcony and I love them so much. I only got two cucumbers but I don't even care.

I had a bunch of nonedibles in a little greenhouse thing, and they flowered too, and I'd find random bugs (a grasshopper. Huge. Massive) in there hanging out. They died when the greenhouse got blown over but they lasted longer than I ever expected to keep a plant alive.

The birds came by my balcony despite the cat avidly watching them by the window. More types of birds, too. And my little compost box is constantly happy with fruit flies and regular flies and things I don't recognize. I never did get around to buying worms, but I haven't had to because the insects are having a blast in there and every time I think "oh, it'll be full" it is, once again, not full because it has been broken down further.

There is a tiny ecosystem on my 6th floor apartment balcony because you get excited about plants, and it was inspiring enough to get me off my ass. Because even if I didn't eat my plants, you reminded me SOMETHING ELSE WOULD.

From the article:

Researchers at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in Brazil have conducted a 2-year testing on second-life polycrystalline solar modules deployed at their campus and have found that they can still ensure “stable” behavior, with performance consistent with annual degradation rates of up to 0.44%. “Despite the many aspects making it a difficult sell, circular economy and sustainability issues might work in favor of second-life photovoltaic modules, due to the huge amount of panels that will become available with the exponential growth this technology is undergoing for nearly a decade,” the research's lead author, Ricardo Rüther, told pv magazine. 

This is so cool! They found that solar panels over two decades old still retain 87-88% of their original functionality.

This website is full of free sewing patterns that will automatically alter to ur measurements

Urban Hacker Bench (uHbench)

A beautiful and sturdy public/garden bench from a standard euro pallet in 8 easy steps using only common tools. Almost no wood pieces are left out. You could also reuse the nails.

This project is totally free (as in freedom) and follows the principles of OSHW (Open Source Hardware). The first design, released in 2012, was published under The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. The actual version (v1.5) is now under the Free Art License 1.3

It seems simple and insignificant, but reintroducing seating can be a radical act of reappropriation. Plus, they can be a place for rough sleepers, or make bus stops more comfortable, and open people’s eyes to the potential of direct action - it’s your community, and no one should be able to stop you from improving it

I dont want to have to sit on the ground everytime I need a break, but I’ve done it, and gotten a ton of nasty stares.

and im loving the end result