What a beautiful morning.
Let's see what opportunities we have to stick a wrench into the gears of fascism with one hand...
...and commit acts of feeding, clothing, sheltering, and protecting people with the other.
Time to bring out the *punk* in Solar Punk.
While waiting for the paperwork to go through for that national food rescue org, I'm still going to do food rescue manually.
Another donut haul! I dont know how many donuts. Lost count.
Anyhow. had to find space in the free fridge for it. Folks had added even more fresh veggies and bread and salads, so I had to get creative making room for my deserts. 
Edit: Ignore the lighting in the fridge. It was night time and I used a flash. Makes things weird colors. Anyhoo.
The following link can change your world view.
Seriously, you need to read the linked post. If you worry that someone will take advantage of the system or get what they don't deserve, and that makes you angry, read the post for a dose of plain civilized thinking.
#economics #food #prosperity #basicincome #postscarcity #mutualaid #Writer #Author #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon
Hat tip to @floofpaldi
cc: @raccoon @tinker
Maria Langer (@mlanger ) asks a great question regarding "Free Fridges" and Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid Food Distribution:
Original Question and Thread: https://mastodon.world/@mlanger/113764511068543932
Question: "What worries me more is people putting tainted food into it. There are a lot of seriously fucked up people in this world. I'm old enough to remember the tainted Tylenol bottles that led to everything being safety sealed today. One nut who has it in for poor people can do a lot of damage."
Awesome question!
The short answer is THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!!! OH NOOOO!!!
But not for the *reasons* you think.
People put in food that is past its "best use by" date all the time. In fact, food rescue is all about getting food that would otherwise be thrown out, past the "use by" date (but still good), sorting out which food is still good, and using that!
Heck, in traditional charity Food Bank / Food Pantry distributions, we get a pallet of fresh grapefruits and 10% will have "natural penicillin" (yuck!) or gets squashed in transit, and can't be given out. That's tainted food. We just set it aside and compost or throw it out.
I'll do you one better! Do you ever find molded tainted food in your grocery store? Of course you do. Do you ever hear about food recalls after people have gotten sick from listeria or salmonella from a corporate food manufacturer? Of course you do. Have you ever gotten food poisoning from a capitalist restaurant? Yeah, we all have.
We try to minimize it, but our current system is by no means perfect in keeping out "tainted food'. Heck... how many corporate manufacturers INTENTIONALLY SELL US tainted food just for profit? All. The. Freaking. Time.
So...
How we deal with this in our Free Fridges?
Twice a day, we have a cleaning and maintenance shift. It usually takes about ten minutes. Whoever has that time slot goes through and cleans up any spilt food (I had some busted eggs this week). We go through the food in the fridge and pantry and throw out anything that looks bad. The person cleans up trash and boxes , etc.
Also, just like you check your food at the grocery store before you buy it (go through that dozen eggs to make sure none are cracked... and put back the ones that are cracked to be taken care of by the grocery staff), when you take from the free fridge, you do the same. You conduct due diligence. Check for discoloration, broken seals, bad smells, mold, etc. Just like normal.
So far as someone putting in food that is intentionally or maliciously poisoned? That very rarely happens if ever. For one, a lot of the food is sealed. For fresh fruit, poisoning often destroys it. For home cooked food, the folks that do that often do it in bulk and label it - so you know who is doing it. If they poison it, they get arrested... just like normal... Anything unlabeled or generally suspicious is not taken by folks first off and is thrown away when noticed.
This is like razors in halloween candy. It's just not an issue.
Trash Panda (@raccoon) asks a great question regarding "Free Fridges" and Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid Food Distribution:
Original Question and Thread: https://hollow.raccoon.quest/notes/a2jvqqajuvif0aog
Question: "A thing that would worry me is people taking advantage of this and taking a shitload of food without needing it. Like, people who could just afford buying it, you know? Does it ever happen?"
Awesome question!
And it has a couple of answers or way to approach it. I'll try to answer it in those couple of ways.
Answer 1) Let them. Let them take as much as they want or need. We'll just produce more. We have the means. - There is often a worry of people "abusing" a system. This is a SCARCITY mindset. It worries that there's not enough to go around, so folks will abuse it and take from others.... BUUUUUT.... there IS enough to go around... you can take what you need, heck take more than you need, and it will be fine. We. Have. Enough.
Answer 2) Let's actually threat model this out. Like... Is this really a problem? If so... who would do it.
So the short answer is, it's not really a problem in practice. There are many free fridges already going. No one really "abuses" (in any meaningful definition of the word) the system.
So it's not a hypothetical. We can just look at what's actually happening. And it's not a concern.
Long Answer: When you grow up in scarcity and first encounter post-scarcity, it is NORMAL to hoard things.
Let me say that again.
It is NORMAL for people to take what they need NOW and then take more for what they think they will need LATER for security and even add a buffer on top of that JUST TO BE SURE!!!
Cool.
Let them.
After a while, they realize that they TOO are not consuming all they have and they start to FEED BACK INTO the post-scarcity input / output.
This is called healing.
Artificial Scarcity (read Capitalism) hurts people.
Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid heals people.
If part of that process is them using the post-scarcity system a lot until they heal and get used to having enough... then it's chill. Let them "abuse" it. It'll be fine.
Answer 3) If we give into this fear, we produce the result of the fear without the fear itself ever needing to be realized. To put it another way, if we worry people will abuse it and there won't be enough food for others, and we don't do it out of that fear... then..... there DEFINITELY isn't food for others. Lol! Out of a fear that the prophesy will come true, we have ensured that it came true. So... like.... just do it... and deal with any problems that come up when they do.
Answer 4) You mentioned "People who could just afford buying it" could take things they don't need.
Cool. Let them!
I don't want ANYONE to have to pay for food.
I want food to be free.
But this line of thinking that we ONLY GIVE TO THOSE WHO DESERVE IT leads to insidious things like "means testing' where we SPEND MORE MONEY AND TIME AND EFFORT to keep food out of the mouths of those who "might not need it" than if we just used that money time and effort to feed everyone including th
e "rich".
Post-scarcity means post. scarcity. It's not scarce. You can get free food even if you could afford to buy it.
Just feed people.
We have enough.
. @kechpaja - Au contraire, my friend!!!
Prepare yourself for a lengthy rebuttal! (And thank you for the opportunity to info-dump on you!)
So this *is* an example of post-scarcity infrastructure. But how and why?
High Level Definition of Post-Scarcity Food (so that we may agree on terms): Post Scarcity is where we produce more food than is consumed and distribute that food out. It can be universal or local - so unevenly distributed post-scarcity or the fact that one area has it and another doesn't, does not imply that post-scarcity in the place that has it does not exist.
Great.
In the *pragmatic* sense: Post Scarcity Food needs inputs and outputs. Contributions and Distributions.
Overview:
*Current* Contributions / Inputs (read: not ideal, not what is being built or hoped for, but how it is right now):
- Charity (which you reduced food rescue and free fridges down into)
- Food Rescue (not charity... not even mutual aid)
- Mutual Aid
Current Distributions / Outputs
- Centralized
- Decentralized
- Peer-to-peer
Detail:
Contributions / Inputs
- Charity: Examples of this include food drives, food banks, church food pantries. Charities are not ideal and often have conditions tied to them ("Means Testing" and the like). They rely on "people being kind and generous" as you put it. If all we had was charity, we would not be in post-scarcity. While charity is often a cover for artificial-scarcity (our current over-arching economic model), it CAN be used as an input into post-scarcity. You just can't rely on it and need to build it further infrastructure. I use it because its there, but it's more of a transition thing.
- Food Rescue: Food Rescue is not Charity. Food Rescue is not Mutual Aid. Current Food Rescue relies on a capitalistic model. A for-profit store/restaurant/bakery/etc makes food to sell. Cannot sell all of it. Instead of throwing it away, it "donates" the left over good food to be consumed elsewhere. Food Rescue is NOT out of the goodness of a corporation's heart. Corporations do not have hearts. They cannot be kind or generous. Instead, Food Rescue is applied to the bottom line / profit margin and is justified by things such as "lowering the fees for trash" and "having a tax-writeoff to a non-profit (again within a capitalistic system). But! While Food Rescue is not charity and relies on the current capitalist system, it absolutely shows that we produce MORE than is consumed. Ironically, an example that we have the MEANS for post-scarcity. I use it because its there and is a ready source of feeding people. While I push for post-scarcity, I care about feeding people *now*.
- Mutual Aid: This is the ideal and the model for a full post-scarcity economy, and we're already building this out. Community Farms / Ranches (Centralized), Community Gardens / Local Small Scale Ranches (Decentralized), and Home Gardens / Home Ranches of various forms (peer-to-peer) are ways that we produce for ourselves, our neighbors, and our towns. This is post-scarcity mutual aid and does not rely on the people being kind and generous. It relies on us taking care of our neighbors AND ourselves (call it selfish if you like). Mutual means mutual.
Detail:
Distributions / Outputs
- Centralized: The charity model uses food pantries / churches / mobile pantries to distribute out food from a food bank. We can utilize that now, but we are absolutely not (nor should we be) limited by it. Instead, Free Stores are the Centralized model of post-scarcity mutual aid.
- Decentralized: Free Fridges & Community Pantries - This is where my fridge above fits in. It's not charity by any means. It's a node in a distribution network.
- Peer-to-peer: The simplest form of this is one person handing it to another. A neighbor asking for sugar. Handing off your extra squash on your street corner. You can scale this up using things like mobile apps such as Olio to coordinate this across larger areas.
Great, so we laid out inputs and outputs for post-scarcity food.
To give a specific example, see this post: https://infosec.exchange/@tinker/112582425833711424
There I show how I used the Input of a Mutual Aid Home Garden and the Output of a Decentralized Free Fridge.
None of that was charity. None of it was "kind and generous". Instead it was building the infrastructure for post-scarcity mutual aid that I use myself.
I take from the free fridge all the time. I drop off at the free fridge all the time. I produce for the community. I consume from the community.
We have the tech & the means. We have built infrastructure already (see the original post). We are now scaling it out.
Someone dropped off a massive food rescue haul to our free fridge and community pantry today.
They're not part of my program and we're not sure who's doing it. This is awesome. It means there are others outside of our volunteer group that does maintenance on the fridges and outside of the group that I'm working with to build out our formal food rescue program.
This is huge.
This means we have successfully built post-scarcity *infrastructure*!!!
Folks are using our fridges both to contribute and to utilize. Folks that have nothing to do directly with the core group of maintainers. Wow.
We need to build more free fridges. This one is running out of room.
Ok! I snagged the domain https://fxbg.food
Put up a landing page. Will update later.
I get to buy a new domain name and spin up a new web site for our food rescue & free fridge group!!!
I *LOVE* New Domain Day!!!!
Brainstorming Request! - I need help coming up with a name.
So some solarpunks and anarchists and mutual aid folks and food folks are coming together in my town and we need a group name.
Two constraints:
It needs to be: FXBG <something>
FXBG is the local town branding for Fredericksburg. So we have FXBG Hackers, FXBG Solarpunks, FXBG Winery, FXBG Arsonists, FXBG... well you get the idea.
The other is we want it do be food related. Mutual aid related. Sort of thing. So something that encapsulates food security, free fridges, food rescue / gleaning. Buuuut... its not the only mutual aid group in town, so it can't be too overarching. Like no FXBG Mutual Aid or similar.
What are your (and I mean you... the one who read all the way to the bottom of this post) thoughts?
"FXBG Free Fridge & Food Rescue" is too much of a mouthful.
"FXBG Food" is too generic
"FXBG Gleaners" isn't specific enough
"FXBG Food Rescue" doesn't include the free fridges.
I need help!!!!
Seen in one of my discord chats:
(Note: This isn't my town, but its a larger city near by that does food rescue. I just love the interaction!)
This is the first Appendix to my Introduction. A good way to get to know me is to know what's important to me, and with these I'll introduce those topics and projects that are. They'll remain as pinned posts on my profile so I can refer people to them should the topic ever come up.
The first and most important thing in my life is something called Technocracy. Most likely you haven't heard of it before, and if by some chance you have, what I am talking about here is most likely not related at all to what you've heard before. So what is it exactly? Keeping in mind that it is a topic large enough that it is normally taught in a study course, and any less than that risks what might be called "Blind Men and the Elephant Syndrome", in short Technocracy is a proposal for a sustainable, post-scarcity economic system.
To describe how it works, the shortest description would be "Technocracy is a system where machines do all the work people don't want to do." This is of course a big oversimplification, but it gets the essential point across, and that is that our society has reached a point, technologically speaking, where most work is obsolete. And our continued attempts to maintain an economic system that requires human labor is not only holding us back from a better future, but is indeed making things worse. That is why an essential part of Technocracy is to separate a person's labor from their ability to consume. Only by doing this can we let machines do what they do best, and free the rest of us to pursue better lives for everyone. As for how exactly it accomplishes this, there's more to it than can be put in any social media post. Anyone interested in learning more can visit www.technate.org and/or talk to me about it. I'll also be posting more about it from time to time here.
1/-
Ok! Had a technical demo of the web app for food rescue.
I think we're going to go with them.
Solid desktop app that scales well for mobile.
Its a lightweight org with a small budget but they're doing a lot with it. Feature rich currently and does everything i need it to do so far as coordinating between the food rescue sites, the food distribution sites, and the gleaners connecting the two.
Once we get it up and running officially, i'll post it here.
THEY DID IT!!!!
My local library built the seed library!
The local Master Gardeners provided a lot of the intitial seeds (oh my gosh we are stocked!!!). They used an old card catalogue to store them. Today's the kickoff!
The idea is you "check out seeds" from the library, plant/grow/harvest, let some go to seed, then "return the seeds" back to the library!
Free seeds for everyone!
Editing to add my library's Seed Library web site: https://www.librarypoint.org/seed-library/
Next crop planted!
30 crops planted:
5x Buttercrunch
5x Romaine
5x Pak Choy
5x Arugula
5x Kale
5x Spinach
I'm not seeding separately. I planted right in the grow bins. We'll see if that works.
Using Kratky method. So I've poured as much water and nutrients as each plant needs and I'm leaving it alone for a couple of months. No pumps, no aerators, etc. Just a food safe plastic 5-gallon bin with water & nutrients and nothing else.
I also added more light. So before I had three LED T5s on both levels. Now I have four on top and five on the bottom.
I'm using rockwool held in with pool noodle sections (the light green circles on top). I'm going to be looking into using other mediums here in the future.
(See thread for previous build information and crop)
So hydroponics are kicking off (as well as soil container gardens, backyard gardens, and community plot gardens) with me and my friends....
....and with that now is a good time to emphasize that this is not just a hobby (or a hobby at all for some). It's easy. sure. And takes little time, money, and effort... and is fun... and calming... don't get me wrong.
But we're not doing this for shits and giggles.
This is one part of a larger effort at bringing about post-scarcity food. (Note: One part. No one thing is a panacea.)
So right now, we have efforts to garden (hydroponically or otherwise) for one's self and one's family. That's good. It either supplements or fully replaces a corporate grocery store. Great.
But it's only part of it.
The next part is mutual aid. When we plant food, we also plant for our neighbors and greater community. For every 5 plants I harvest, I give away at least 1 plant. At least 20 percent. The question then becomes, how do we get the food out. How do we distribute it?
Food banks are fine. They're already set up. Many accept home grown produce. The issue with food banks is they are often means tested. You have to prove you NEED the food before you get it. That has a shit ton of issues and often just means that people who are hungry don't get to eat.
Instead of food banks, I've been using two solutions to distribute food.
1) The Olio App ( https://olioapp.com/en/ ): The Olio App let's you list your produce online. Folks can then request the item and arrange for pickup. It's like craiglist and uber eats and specifically is about giving away free food.
2) Community Fridges / Community Pantries ( https://freedge.org/locations/ ): Free fridges and pantries are physical nodes in your community where folks that have extra food, put it in the pantry. Folks that need food, take it out. Give a food, take a food. No need for apps, low overhead, works really well and is efficient.
The key to all of this is it's NOT charity. This is MUTUAL aid. You give AND you take. As we produce for ourselves we also produce for our neighbors. Everyone eats.
Thoughts for the next crop....
1) I'm going to plant directly into the grow bin... I don't need to do a separate seeding phase and then move it over. I think it'll germinate / sprout right in the bin and then grow roots down into the nutrient water.
2) I'm going to harvest a week earlier this go around... at about five weeks. The leaves seemed fuller then.
3) I'm going to move the Kale and Arugula to more light and keep the light the same for the leafy greens.
4) I'm going to try to grow some spinach and bok choy this go around as well! Maybe swap out the gold leaf for some romaine lettuce. I did four bins this go around. I'll get two more for the kitchen shelf.
5) I really don't like using the rockwool. I mean.. it works GREAT. Like its awesome. But it's 6 cents a cube (expensive, right!?!?!). But I also don't like having to clean it off the plants when I harvest. I'm going to experiment with soil and hydroponic cups and see if that works. Dirt is... dirt cheap. Like... fractions of a cent per plant and much easier to clean off. I'll start a new thread on that. (note: I might still use up some of my rockwool this next go around, but I'll be phasing out of it)
6) I need to expand. Need to grow more. I'm going to build some more grow shelves. Maybe put them in the garage or spread them around the house.
7) I really want to grow two more types of items. Beans and Fruit Bearing Plants (Peppers, Tomatos, Cucumbers, Squash, etc.) - To that end, I'm going to start experimenting with Kratky reservoirs - Still cheap. Still passive. Still automated. Still hands off.
8) I'm going to get more people to use the Olio app for decentralized food swapping. Gonna push the idea that we give away at least 20% of our crop to our neighbors. We can feed everyone. We have the means of production here. We have localized coordination and distribution here. We are building post-scarcity food.
Alright... Lastly, I have enough photos and notes, I can build out a DIY How-To. Once I get that written, I'll add it to this thread and close it out. Cheers all!
Great news! My library got back to me!
They're interested in building out a seed library as well!!!
YAYAYAYAY!!!!!!
I'm developing some basic classes on how to do low-budget, simple, indoor (in any space) hydroponics. I'm also building out some starter kits to give away.
I'll see if the local library would like me to give these courses and kits when the seed library gets built as a way to promote it and get word out to the local community.
Updated for 2022:
Some #introductions :)
== I am ==
* Irish, Husband, Dad to 3
* Highly driven to learn, adapt, and improve.
* Possessed of an atypical neurology.
* Buried in nearly-finished projects and neglected hobbies
== I Believe ==
* People will do their best if given the conditions to thrive.
* Individuals need communities to thrive.
* Good Individuals owe something to good communities.
* Money and Power self-accumulate. Unchecked, they kill communities.
* The Natural Environment gives abiding wealth to communities.
* It is possible to have a fair, technologically advanced world that is ecologically sound.
== I am Interested In ==
* Programming, Data, #MachineLearning, #AIEthics
* #ArtificialLife, Computational Neuroscience
* Genetics, Cell Biology, Metabolics, Nutrition
* Permaculture, #Bioremediation, Composting
* #Forests, #Fungi, Evidence-Based #Herbalism, #Foraging
* #PostScarcity, #Solarpunk, #Resilience
* #DIYbio, Amateur Biotech
* Decentralisation, Mesh Networks, Sneakernets, Rogue Archives
* #Privacy, Reflection, Creativity
* Celtic Languages - #Gaeilge, Gàidhlig, Cymraeg!
* Music, Singing, #SeanNós
