xworlds
Audubon Ballroon (he/him)
Kevin Karhan 
F4GRX Sébastien
Pusher of Pixels
AI6YR Ben
Ashwin DixitThe two main causes of people missing limbs are cars & wars which are fought for dead dinosaur fuel for cars, which are a transportation medium meant for speed over safety, and super inefficient, with a very low payload( passengers & cargo )/vehicle ratio. Most of the energy a car uses is used to haul itself, at high speed, so heavy armor is necessary.
End cars. End wars. End missing limbs.
Oil things must pass.
End cities.
Bicycles /w bamboo truss frames & solar batteries. 🌻
Pope Bob the Unsane@bobdobberson @audubonballroon
Imagine electric Zeppelins that you could ride your electric bike/trike to, stow it, and sit in a comfy cabin for tea/coffee/snacks/reading/games/socializing or find a cabin for a nap/quickie ( kilometer high club ;-). Slow, luxurious travel, like the airship the Doctors Jones almost escaped Germany in.
No grid. No power lines. No electric fire hazard. No cyber intrusion to cause cascading grid failures. Distributed solar charging stations. Swappable batteries.
@purrperl you had me at kilometer high club.
@bobdobberson @audubonballroon
Leave the roads car free and care free. Open to pedestrians, electric vehicles and skaters. Rip concrete and wires out of the Earth. Less concrete, glass and metal. ( More Concrete Blonde, Philip Glass, and Metal 💀 )
People are not isolated and whizzing by at high speed to buy junk. There are no brands. Everything is hand made with care, to last. No industrial production. Everything is one of a kind. Microbrew. Earth friendly. Linux robots to do the farming.
@purrperl no, we're turning the freeways into railways.
@bobdobberson @audubonballroon
No poles, no overhead wires, no excuses for wild fires, no land grabs for capitalist's desires.
@purrperl we will take the no wires into consideration. For the time being, that is one of the more efficient ways to drive trains.
@bobdobberson @audubonballroon
I mean, rip out these kind of wooden poles and dangling wires, which are a fire hazard, honestly.
First photo in this video I made here in Big Island, Hawai'i:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/asWwAxyCvWEioxTV8
@purrperl I feel the pain, and I agree it is a fire-hazard, however underground lines are difficult in areas where temperatures drop below 20F regularly.
@bobdobberson @audubonballroon
I guess I was thinking of Hawai'i specifically, since we suffered the Maui wildfires. imho, calculated arson & land grab by shady capitalists who get to look good while moving the locals off the land for a pittance.
Wild fires are less common in colder regions than Hawai'i, which has a lot of grassy lands.
@purrperl I will be sure to task local Hawai'ian people to examine the situation in Hawai'i, and address concerns such as wild-fires when replacing the limited road system with a rail system.
I am most certainly not an expert on conditions there.
@bobdobberson @audubonballroon
I had proposed a convoy based monorail system.
You have a bike/trike which is electric, and runs on swappable solar batteries.
You drive it to the monorail station.
It has built-in hitches, front & back.
It enters a monorail station and becomes part of queue of other vehicles.
When a monorail comes by, the queue is shunted in.
Disembarking vehicles are shunted out.
The monorail includes passenger only cars.
At your destination, you can drive off autonomously.
@purrperl why a bike and not a bus? Individual transportation is a tarpit of failure.
@bobdobberson @audubonballroon
This gives you both, convoy mode and free driving mode.
In convoy mode, the vehicle moves extra fast, but there are no collisions because the road is not shared. Just one convoy moving along at maximum speed.
@purrperl yes, but... why not load the bike onto a vehicle that can travel at a speed 2x or faster and safer than the bike?
@bobdobberson @audubonballroon
Yep. That's a possibility. Instead of clunky queuing and dequeuing, the vehicles just drive into a special car. The passengers can get out and hang around the snack bar etc. Good idea!
@bobdobberson @audubonballroon
Here in Big Island, there's a two lane road that goes around the edge of the whole island. One lane each way. When a bus stops at a stop, the whole traffic stops till it can load/unload and move again.
A hybrid monorail + electric bike transport could make this go smoothly.
@purrperl maybe the problem is that there is traffic to stop, and that should be replaced with rails that have a schedule.
@bobdobberson @audubonballroon
The road is shared by cars, buses, bikes, scooters, etc.
It could be reduced to just monorail, bikes, and scooters. Bikes and scooters go in the monorail. Never any traffic jams or collisions.
@purrperl OK...
As Prime Minister, I will work to restrict cars, bikes, scooters, and busses from those roads so the roads can be replaced with rails that have room for bikes.
Jimmy@bobdobberson @purrperl @audubonballroon Oh hurray for sprawl. So lovely to live 2 miles from the nearest grocery store.
@jhavok living 2 miles from a grocery store is an artifact of car-centric society. You are far from your grocery store because cars need to live around you.
Maybe we could fix that. Maybe you could have a grocery store within walking distance.
@jhavok cities have unchecked population density. The solution is planned cities with infrastructure designed to support the population.
At the moment, most major cities are playing the game of catching up with infrastructure because they just keep growing.
However, given so many properties are laying vacant because of airbnb BS, that issue /may/ resolve itself.
Point stands, all of the infrastructure to support somewhere as dense as NYC was built on top of shit built on top of shit, and it's all crumbling.
If we design 'cities' to have a capacity of maybe 50-100k, and spread them out and connect them by rail, we'd do ourselves some big favors.
@jhavok @bobdobberson @audubonballroon
I've lived in many places in America, and the Catskills mountains of New York were particularly memorable. I lived 5Km from the nearest people, and my next door neighbor visited once a year, to hunt white-tailed deer in season.
Places like that let one live in town, or in near isolation. Only ride your electric vehicle ( bike/trike/whatever you like ) into town for supplies, if that's your style.
Video of a ride to my cabin:
https://lone.earth/w/sBz2QQVK6v1uWBBxcEtTaG
Wolf Hollow Road
@purrperl that sounds like a lovely place to live...
@bobdobberson @jhavok @audubonballroon
I had the most creative times of my life on a sabbatical for ~ 2 years. Coding, sleeping, cooking, walking, getting high, smoking, drinking coffee, going on walks, taking photos, 24x7, without being bound to any clocks, budgets, schedules, or people, in particular. Once my gf was visiting, and we were surprised at breakfast by the neighbor knocking on the door to introduce himself, beaming, and holding a freshly killed deer haunch as a gift. Venison Stew!
@purrperl I'm going on 5 years... it has been exceptionally helpful to have this time.
@bobdobberson @jhavok @audubonballroon
Good for you. That was a long time ago for me. I had to go back into the fray, and do heroic battles again, to regain some Slack.
In any case, I don't get what people mean by "retirement".
I've got better things to do, than to watch TV, have a couple of brews.
I can't stop, won't stop in retirement. Just getting started with creative fun!
Got many good decades in me, God willing, and many fun things to do, thank God.
So many books to write/read, for one.
@purrperl I've taken a sabbatical to lean into my discombobulation and to process a lot of the trauma that has lead to my discombobulation.
I am nearing the beginning of my recombobulation project, but I am not quite ready to pull the trigger on that.
I can coast on the luck-plane for a while longer, if need be, but I think I am approaching an end.
I've given myself 1 more year to get a job where I would really like to work, and then when I have proven to myself that blacklists are real, I will move on to looking elsewhere...
@purrperl and there are so many toys to play with these days. So many electronics projects, androids, arduinos, raspberry pis, and all the cool gadgets and gizmos.
Lots to be creative with outside of that too, the arts, writing (which is an art), the science -- we still don't know everything, collectively -- still lots to discover and preconceptions to challenge.
Anyhow... Yeah... I don't get 'retirement' either.
@purrperl both in that I don't 'understand' it, and I likely won't be able to afford it. But that's ok, things I enjoy doing are things people are willing to pay for.
@purrperl in my new frame of reality, the pay is commensurate with the amount of bullshit I have to endure to accomplish the goal.
@bobdobberson @jhavok @audubonballroon
The thing is, I was very much in my game, when I got unhoused.
I have a whole lot of new technologies to drop and am looking for collaborators.
I have this co-op registered in Hawai'i
https://gitlab.com/we-glue-earth/we.glue.earth
(Do check out the video link.)
And here's a partial vision map for more offerings:
https://rant.li/ashwin/visions-for-a-new-web
Thoughts?
@purrperl I will process this and get back in a bit. My mind is elsewhere, but from the summary, it sounds rad.
I'm just not a fan of Hawa'ai, too warm... Beaches get boring... The jungles would be cool as fuck though... I dunno... I'll look things over and hopefully remember to follow up.
@bobdobberson @jhavok @audubonballroon
Oh, I was thinking this would be a remote first organization of global nomads who work around the clock and meet up once in a while informally at some beautiful location.
@purrperl sounds pretty good to me. Sounds a bit like a consulting agency, which I could get along with. I'm mostly interested in term gigs, where there is a project to finish or a task to accomplish and then on to the next thing.
@bobdobberson @jhavok @audubonballroon
I have the same background and had the consultant mindset.
This is a passion play, not employment. If you are sitting around spinning wheels, join forces with others and collaborate on an egalitarian co-op. If it succeeds, all succeed. Otherwise, it's a good way to keep skills sharp and have some skin in the game, rather than sitting around at home, just chilling without much focus. This is a big project, which need missionaries, not mercenaries.
@bobdobberson @purrperl @audubonballroon People are far from their grocery stores because they go "ugh cities" and think sprawl is better. High density makes public transit practical.
@jhavok I dunno anyone who thinks sprawl -- the suburbs -- is better than cities or rural living.
The suburbs are kind of the worst way to live.
@bobdobberson @purrperl @audubonballroon If you put people in low density housing, you get sprawl. That's not hard to understand. Cities can be better designed, of course, there are a lot of bad zoning practices that make them less livable, but overall, they are a more efficient use of resources than sprawl. Sprawl is the result of zoning policies that mandate low density.
@jhavok I didn't say low density housing. The solution to population density being a problem is not to put people 1 mile from their neighbors.
The problem is cramming millions of people into a very small area, instead of 100,000.
Sprawl is a result of everyone wanting their own crop of grass.
@jhavok cities with populations under 100k are a lot more logical and practical than cities with populations over 1 million.
@bobdobberson @jhavok @audubonballroon
People in cities live in a concrete jungle, cut off from the rhythms, subtle sights, sounds and smells, of Nature.
People in urban buildings live like chimps in cages, stacked on top of each other. Not enough space, and too many chimps in proximity, and the mammalian stress level goes up. Not healthy.
@purrperl indeed. If we designed cities with the intent of small 50-100k populations, we could ensure there is enough communal space and easy access to amenities.
Say what you will about the commie blocks, but they were designed with some good ideas in mind.
@bobdobberson @jhavok @audubonballroon
"Tales from The Loop" is an excellent sci-fi series set in a Soviet block city dedicated to Science.
@purrperl I will have to check it out. I think that was on my radar at one point already...
@purrperl @bobdobberson @audubonballroon Gotta wonder why I see so many Trump signs in the healthy rural areas so closely in touch with nature.
@jhavok because the people in rural areas are targeted by the media they consume? Like people in population dense areas. Plenty of Trump signs in the suburbs and cities, too.
@bobdobberson @purrperl @audubonballroon Trump lost the urban areas and won the rural areas, giving him the Electoral College. I'm in a deep Blue region, but I only need to drive 20 minutes into farm country to start seeing Trump signs still up...though not as many as 2020 thank goodness.
@jhavok so NOBODY voted for Trump in your population dense / urban area?
@bobdobberson @purrperl @audubonballroon I swear, kolectiva has the lowest IQ of any instance. How does that happen?
@jhavok @bobdobberson @audubonballroon
Probably because of fools who think that intelligence is a linear dick measuring contest and can be reduced to IQ, and not a spectrum of abilities, some barely quantifiable.
@jhavok it makes sense that you would think someone that doesn't buy into team politics is an idiot.
The fans of both teams are equally brainwashed.