Vinay

When the "Are we the baddies?" ship has sailed and you know it.

What's the deal with portable solar panels? Context: I'm looking to move further into the Mexican countryside (I'd be renting a house) where I'm told power outages are more frequent. I'm debating between no-break/UPS battery vs a proper #OffGrid setup vs a #PortableSolar setup. An off-grid setup seems formidably expensive, especially for a rented house, but does it make sense to get a portable battery + panel from, say, #Ecoflow (I see they have options in Mexico)? Their portable panels are priced significantly higher than fixed solar panels though. #AskFedi

@mav I think this is an unfortunate reality with tech choices but also beyond tech, rooted in a lack of training in critical thinking and a lack of consideration of the consequences of a choice.

See also:

• Everyone tells me that US tech spies on me, so let me install this supposedly secure messenger thing called Telegram
• If I don't learn to use AI, I'm going to get left behind by this "innovation" and lose my job, so let me ask AI whether I should continue seeing my boyfriend, or how the tides will be tomorrow, and trust whatever it says.
• I'm sick of Big Pharma over-prescribing unnecessary drugs just to make profits, so let me...not vaccinate my children because I'm sure it's a scam to sell autism treatments.
• I'm sick of stagnant wages and politicians doing whatever they usually do, so let me vote for this guy who "tells it like it is".

@victorgijsbers@mastodon.gamedev.place Absolutely! One time, on a trek in the Himalayas, a friend and I took a path that ended up leading us nowhere. Thankfully I'd downloaded offline maps on Google Maps and OSMAnd, and while Google Maps just showed me a green blob (😂), the community on OpenStreetMap had uploaded detailed trekking routes which got us back on the right track and to our destination before the sun went down. I'm so grateful that we're able to take the spirit of human collaboration and translate that into community-owned and managed mapping.

@gerrymcgovern From elsewhere in my feed https://restofworld.org/2026/india-data-center-tax-holiday-farmer-protests-ai It's seemingly the same strategy everywhere - Let the poor bear the burden of the impact of data centres.

@anne_twain@theblower.au @janrosenow@mastodon.energy Biomass is complicated, especially in Kenya. Not sure how it's going, but there was an initiative some years ago to promote "sustainable" biofuels while also tackling the problem of the wildly invasive water hyacinth by...using the water hyacinth as biofuel. The "other renewables" is geothermal. See my other reply in this thread. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/aug/27/kenya-water-hyacinth-wonder-source-biofuel

@TomasHelleberg@mastodon.nu @janrosenow@mastodon.energy Yes, geothermal is huge in Kenya. The Lake Naivasha region and the central highlands are peppered with geysers, and it's a thing of beauty to witness the rhythmic eruption of steam and hot water as you hike through Hell's Gate National Park, knowing that a lot of them have been tapped to power the electric grid in the country. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210303-geothermal-the-immense-volcanic-power-beneath-our-feet

1. I hosted a dinner at home for a few friends yesterday, and even though I was stressed out and disappointed with myself for not making all the food I had intended to make (in hindsight, trying to make SIX different dishes was perhaps a bit ambitious 😅), there was plenty of food, snacks and wine, and it was nice to be in the company of people who share a lot of my values and to talk about the absurdities of 2016. Bonus: we watched an episode of #Sense8 and laughed at the silliness of having a "good policeman" character.

2. I got a ticket for the #ÓlafurArnalds concert in CDMX in November 🤩

3. I'm happy to have gotten back to reading books. I read a lot most days, but it's mostly news articles and opinion pieces and I'd been craving to get back to books! Next stop: exercise.

#ThreeGoodThings

@janrosenow@mastodon.energy For additional context, the goal was to hit 100% renewable energy by 2020 (I was among the hundreds of protesters in Sept 2020 in Nairobi who marched to demand faster decarbonization and honouring the 100% renewable energy pledge), and that it hasn't happened yet is a result of entrenched political players and the sluggishness of the monopoly power utility, Kenya Power. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/12/kenya-wants-to-run-entirely-on-green-energy-by-2020/