Seconding this - I’ve done the month overlap thing twice, with cars and a moving truck and everything. Once because my current landlords expected me out on the last day and the new people wouldn’t let me move in until noon on the first even though the place was already empty for “renovations” (slapping another coat of white paint over everything, dirt and all). The other time because I had a line on a great place and didn’t want to miss it. It still made moving way easier and I was able to skip the moving truck that time.

This is great stuff! Thanks for getting it set up here

It’s not just parks though, there are tons of options that don’t cost buildable land - the article called out sidewalks and medians, I’d highlight how well a goal of more trees fits with pedestrianized streets, or even traffic calming tactics like removing lanes. On top of that many cities have places you can’t build which are great places for greenways - bike paths on former rail easements, riparian boundaries along rivers and other waterways, even linear parks over shallow subway tunnels.

Seconding this! I also keep an eye out on my local Buy Nothing group, and offer up wood scraps when I see someone looking for something I have. It helps keep folks from buying new and if I need it in the future, chances are someone else will have a replacement for me. (I also get a lot of lumber this way).

I’ve given away stair treads, particleboard sheets, plywood, and dimensional lumber, sometimes cut or milled to whatever dimensions they need. I even used my scraps and part of a table to build a saddle stand for someone who was looking for a suitable piece of furniture for displaying a saddle once!

To deconstruct a dwelling involves carefully dismantling an entire building to salvage as many materials as possible. These include removing specific high-value components, such as timber, windows, doors, flooring, fixtures, and structural elements for reuse or repurposing. Unlike traditional demolition, which prioritises speed, deconstruction focuses on salvaging valuable materials to reduce waste and lower the demand for new raw resources, thereby minimising environmental impact. Housing deconstruction and selective deconstruction approaches differ in scope, level of disassembly, and goals. Reclaimed timber, if structurally sound, can be repurposed for new construction projects.

I think this is my new favorite definition of deconstruction! This paper has a ton of good information and links to other studies, I’m going to have to rework my notes on deconstruction to include them.

I did try that, and found a bunch of lists, but not that particular one (nor can I apparently find the user moanos who created this list). Perhaps the two instances aren’t federating.

edit: this actually seems to be the case - since I can see Remy Rose’s “We Don’t Have To Live Like This” list from my instance.

For some reason I can’t figure out how to reach your list from https://bookwyrm.social/ but I’d suggest Murder in the Tool Library by AE Marling and the Glass and Gardens anthology if you’re looking for more recommendations.

If you’re using a chainsaw make sure you’re wearing chainsaw chaps, a face shield, gloves etc. The chaps especially can save your legs and your life when the saw kicks back (and it will at some point) - especially if you’re out in the sticks and alone.

Reticulum is a decent candidate for this (in that it’s purpose-built for more than texting).

There’s a couple good beginner’s introductions here:

https://www.carstenboll.dk/reticulum-a-beginners-guide/

https://github.com/samuk/awesome-reticulum/

Reticulum is a whole cryptography-based network stack which feels like it was developed from the ground up out of radio networking protocols. It can run over the same LoRa radio devices Meshtastic and Meshcore can use, but it can also use ad-hoc WiFi, data radios, modems, serial lines, amateur radio digital modes, and it can even tunnel through the Internet (meaning you could set up a local mesh of LoRa radios, old personal computers and laptops, and whatever wireless routers and other networking gear you can find, connect a neighborhood together using Reticulum as the underlying network, then connect that through the internet to Reticulum networks anywhere in the world. You can write software to run on Reticulum, and it already has a bunch of programs like NomadNet which can do encrypted messaging (same goal as Meshtastic and Meshcore) but also host and view text-based web pages and I think some other stuff. In a lot of ways, this one feels like the meshnet you’d see in a scifi book, an all-encrypted network stack that allows you to just link together any old hardware you can scrape together and rebuild a decentralized version of the internet grounded in much more secure protocols. (I’ll admit I straight up don’t understand how a lot of this works on the network/cryptography level, it actually seems similar to Tor in some ways but I don’t understand that very well either.)

Worst case, it could make a pretty cool sunken greenhouse if it gets enough light

To quote the article:

There are still many human-powered carts in modern society: strollers, grocery carts, roller suitcases, and various utility and folding carts. However, these modern carts are to their predecessors what modern birds are to dinosaurs. They are small, often with very small wheels, and we use them for very short distances, usually inside buildings.

Just transporting my case of glass vials of Nitroglycerin like it’s the third act of a western film.

If you have local free groups (Freecycle, Buy Nothing, Everything is Free) this isn’t even that weird an item for an In Search Of post. Someone in town will have something they’ll be happy to share.

We’ve already got an ewaste pc set up for checking mice and keyboards and printers, I’ll see if I can find one of these on eBay. At the very least it’ll probably be useful to me.

Is there a project to send these codes to if we start recording them?

We’re an all-volunteer operation with basically no budget but recording that stuff could be doable eventually, if we had somewhere to send the info. Is there an IR receiver or something we’d need? Right now we’re a bit too busy just sorting ewaste, testing devices, and scrubbing the grunge off them.

I appreciate this write-up - you’ve done a good job of identifying the problem and I’d very much support the policy solution you’ve come up with. The electronics section of the swap shop I help with has a filing cabinet full of ziplocks of old remote controls that come in (tested with a camera to see if the IR light comes on, and sorted by brand). It’s a kinda brute-force solution dependant on having a bunch of space and a steady flow of ewaste but we’ve been able to pair a lot of TVs with their missing remotes (and hand remotes out to people who need a replacement). I think it’s one of those things that becomes somewhat practical at the community scale. If a city of hundreds of thousands has a filing cabinet of old remotes that’s not that bad. If I have a filing cabinet of old remotes I’m a hoarder. It still doesn’t really answer the weird one-offs and no-nanes very well, though we’ve had a couple one-in-a-million matchups

Edit: I’d also favor requiring the device have some way to do every feature without the remote.

It reminds me of similar work with beaver dam analogs.

The small dams they’re using sound like check dams, which apparently can do some damage if they’re not maintained but I don’t know enough of the history there to know how different this is.

Question from someone who has only done extremely basic electrical work: if this thing is feeding power in on one circuit, can devices on another circuit use that power? I’d been assuming you’d have to plug it in next to whatever you intend to draw from it.

Not sure if Aniline wood dyes are all that different but they also work really well!

I think I’d heard of this previously but I might actually have access to a supported device now! I’ll have to try it out.