Editing to add this link from another comment because I had no idea that (of course) there’s organized opposition by entrenched interests to prevent anything for the public good https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/06/dark-roof-lobby-white-reflective-roofs-laws-lobbying-urban-heat-islands/

I don’t think the current roofs are painted black - they’re naturally black because roofing tar and asphalt shingles are black by default (a lot of sheet metal roofing is too but you can at least get that in most colors). So it’s not a matter of swapping out paint but adding something new. It also adds a new maintenance cost - keeping the white roof clean/maintained. Paint flakes off, tarps etc wear and become tattered, dirt and pollen collect on the surface. None of this is a dealbreaker by any means but our society seems to run on defaults and there’s a lot of inertia in construction and a lot of pressure on builders to keep materials costs down (even if doing so costs the owners or occupants more in the long run).

I hope this continues to take off because it really is a big improvement.

Such a great project!

Sounds like ‘installed’ might be overselling it a little unfortunately - given that jerks carried them off. There are a few types of epoxy that could help. Pretty sure even JB Weld will stick wood to concrete. And they make some amazing specialist adhesives. It won’t stop the city but might delay the NIMBYs for a day or two. (Especially if they’re as old as I am and they throw their back out trying to pick it up the first time).

That seems like it would work quite well! Especially if the patio screen guarantees other critters won’t try to come in.

Not sure what tools you have access to but If you have a table saw you can cut a notch into the wood for the plexi before you assemble the frame.

I just helped my folks turn a porch into a catio - we used a layer of chicken wire on the inside with a layer of fabric bug screen on the outside. Years ago one of our cats got startled and ran right through a screen on our screen porch (fell one story into deep snow and kept right on going. He was fine, my dad was pissed). For this one we built wooden frames and stapled the screen and chicken wire on and attached those to the porch with wood screws. You could run slats from house to fence for support.

This sounds wonderful, I’d love to have that kind of network again. I’m curious about how they went about the technical side of things - if it’s all tunneled together or if they’re running cables to nearby houses and setting up wireless relays or something. There’s so much cool stuff we could bring back if we weren’t under constant attack from the internet at large.

So I know some folks who are the type to upgrade every couple years. Generally their old devices get sold on facebook marketplace or craigslist or they give them to me (usually when they’re fed up trying to sell them). I also find plenty of laptops dumped, still working, into corporate ewaste. Most of the ones I end up with get cleaned up, reinstalled, and handed off to a charity.

The better answer is yes there are places people use to give them away for free. Many towns and cities have free groups like Buy Nothing, Everything is Free, or Freecycle. If really recommend these for how easy they are to use. Some recycling centers have swap shops where working items are made available for free to town residents and volunteers can likely point you to relevant charities (such as refugee resettlement orgs or programs providing housing and items to help folks get back on their feet. Makerspaces/hackerspaces are also likely to take working machines, and there’s an outside chance some high school tech program will want them, though that will depend on their needs.

This is my go-to solution - I personally prefer Linux Mint with MATE for a desktop environment.

But if you, like me, have relatives who flatly refuse to use anything but windows (even as they complain about having to relearn the operating system every few years anyways!) then this might be useful to you: https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/22/windows_10_ltsc/?td=rt-3a

Whatever it takes to keep working tech out of the landfill and the potential replacement computers sitting on store shelves.

I really do recommend trying Linux though, it’s been my daily driver for years, including all through college when my windows partition died and I found myself making due with the mint partition I was testing out just to get assignments done. For older computers and Chromebooks Alpine Linux is great but a little more work.

This is cool, kind of a small scale version of resin and fiberglass! Thanks!

Depends on the area but thrift stores can be great for toys - if only because survivorship bias says anything that makes it there will last a long long time.

Local free groups like Buy Nothing can also be great for sports equipment, school supplies, kid sized furniture etc.

If it works, I’ll share any designs and lessons learned here!

I was wondering if it was something like this, thanks! I’ll see if I can get enough of it off to see if the main sheet is a fresnel lens

I’m clear on the other side of the continent but I really appreciate it, thank you! I hope you can find someone who’ll use it! And I’ll definitely post my progress!

Thanks! I’m hoping to build a solar forge - I used to do some blacksmithing using coal, but some videos of these things show them burning through steel - if they can get that hot, I could even forge weld again. I’ve still got most of my tools, minus the forge.

Honestly a utility vehicle that isn’t a surveillance box is like all I want from an electric vehicle

We had a kitchen scale with a damaged control panel - the on/off button stopped working. I opened it up, cut one of the battery wires, and soldered in a switch. Cut a hole in the case with an xacto knife, glued the switch through it and put it all back together. Now it has a hardware power switch. If you’re comfortable with basic soldering, maybe that would work for you?

Seconding all of this - these are great recs for drop-in replacements for regular meat. Going vegetarian is a heck of a lot easier than it used to be; we cook a ton of meals right out of my grandmothers’ cookbooks using meat substitutes.

Especially for processed meats like sausage, chicken nuggets, hamburgers, or those premade frozen chicken cor don bleu things, I’d say I prefer the meatless alternatives on taste and texture - even aside from wanting to reduce the harm I cause.

The genre name might not be common knowledge (and I’m not sure that’s the case) but cyberpunk aesthetics and themes and plot points have infiltrated so much of modern science fiction that cyberpunk communities frequently have trouble drawing a line around genre works vs mainstream scifi. And this is after companies and brand marketing “picked it too early” and made it a joke in the 90s. It just sort of kept going quietly, looked more and more prescient, and in the end, it had suffused through so many imaginations and works that it kind of was the mainstream.

I’m not sure the same thing will happen with solarpunk but given the way cyberpunk seems to have acclimatized us to our current distopia, I sort of hope solarpunk can do something similar. Maybe wear the rough edges and propaganda fears off building a society that actually looks out for its people and the habitats they live in.

If it works I’ll definitely post a step-by-step writeup here in the zerowaste community, and I’ll link from this comment if I remember!

This is really cool! I’ll do some more reading and tests first but this might be what I go with for an answer. If it’s as effective and non-oily as he says, it sounds perfect. Plus the fact that it’s just wax and oil and can be remelted if it scrapes or leaks, makes it sound pretty fixable long term.

Edit: also I don’t usually watch nonfiction YouTube stuff but I think I’m going to check out the rest of his content, thanks!

Probably though I hate to throw something away just because the outer layer is failing. I guess that’s why I wore this one till it got like this. I’d like a leather jacket if it fit like this one (and if I got it second hand, I wouldn’t be good with buying one new). Someone gave me one once but it fit me like a tent so I had to pass it along.