I think Holmes exclusively cheated investor-class rich people

Other folks had good answers so I’ll just add a couple resources that don’t involve buying at all:

Depending on your location you may already have access to local Free Groups like Buy Nothing, Everything is Free, or Freecycle. These can be a great way to get good stuff for free or to get rid of working stuff you don’t need without throwing it away. The trade off is in the convenience factor -compared to a box store that’s always open and always has stocked shelves, it may take a while for the thing you’re looking for to become available (though I’ve honestly had good luck on In Search Of posts for everything from electronics and exercise equipment to cans of spray paint and lumber). These groups are also nice ways to get items that are only available from companies you’re avoiding because they’ve already been bought and might be thrown away if they’re not taken.

Alternatively if you’re very lucky you may be near an existing Free Store, Swap Shop, Swap Shed, or Stuff Swap. These places often operate a bit like a thrift store or flea market with no price tags, though some have limits on the total number of items you can take in one go. I’ve found them to be more convenient both for picking up and dropping off stuff than the online groups but they’re comparatively rare and may have limited hours when they’re open.

And if you are buying, thrift stores, consignment stores, flea markets, etc have some great stuff and can also help with boycots. Especially for tools, the older stuff is often better than whatever you can buy new anyways, but the range of items some secondhand shops sell frequently surprises me.

That’s a huge improvement!

I’m having trouble with the scale - could you do a scaffold with two ladders and some planks, maybe across a corner?

This is awesome news! Thanks for letting me know! I’ve been waiting to see these sails get real world use

The big display screens made for corporations are supposed to be high quality TV hardware minus the ‘smart’ features - if you can find a used one without burn-in. But I don’t know specifics for makes or brands, sorry. I get my TVs from ewaste so the goal there is mostly just to limp it along while ignoring whatever problem caused the original owner to throw it away.

This is an awesome outlook, thank you for all your work on this design!

There are some interesting oven designs that use rooftop solar collectors (mirrored troughs with a tube of transfer fluid running through them) connected to normal-ish form factors ovens downstairs. It’s basically the same setup for solar steam generators (if you run a business that uses a lot of steam). The only problem is it’s a direct use of the heat without much storage (from what I remember) so you can’t really start baking before sunup.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/04/23/aggressive-tiger-mosquitoes-are-spreading-through-europe-how-can-we-protect-ourselves

There are also some cool designs for direct solar that point a reflector dish into a hole in a wall (the inside of the hole is the inside of an oven in the kitchen). Tamara solar kitchen has one but there are lots of similar versions.

This sounds really cool! I like that this and NomadNet seem to bundle hosting in with browsing/viewing. It feels like lowering the barrier for entry on self hosting nicely.

There’s a bunch of them!

I gathered up all the examples I could find awhile back:

https://jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com/2024/10/15/nautical-solarpunk-a-resource-for-solarpunk-writers-and-artists/

The IRL and proposed examples are about halfway down the page.

This is really cool! A bike based road train

Looking over my bookshelves and trying to remember what I’ve read so this’ll be kinda eclectic.

Harry Harrison’s the Jupiter Plague probably hits some of what you’re looking for. It’s not my favorite of everything he wrote, but he wrote so much that that’d be a pretty stiff competition anyway.

There’s a book called Space Doctor which I obviously bought for the title (by Lee Correy). It’s about setting up the first medical center in space, on a new orbital construction platform, and all the challenges they run into with zero gravity trauma surgery, contamination, radiation, vacuum injury, etc. The high frontier medicine and logistical stuff was very interesting, probably because the author was a medical doctor. Unfortunately that stuff shares the book with a love story which is bad even for older scifi (I was gonna say 60s scifi but it turns out it was published in the 80s).

Actually it looks like that’s all I’ve got. I’ll edit if I find any others!

That might be too much authenticity

I’m honestly not against using Facebook to actually do some good if you already have an account - there’s something to be said for using the places people where people are already hanging out. But if you don’t have one, it’s definitely not worth making one.

Freecycle has local sites for different locations, there might be one for your community. And Buy Nothing has been trying to move off Facebook (to an app, unfortunately - I don’t like apps) so that might also be an option. Both host the right kind of community for this kind of project.

One other thing I’ve had some luck with is just putting up paper flyers. I try to look for the places where people already congregate or where lots of staples and thumbtacks indicate that other folks felt it was a good spot for flyers.

They’ve all been making bigger cars with ‘luxury’ features included by default so they can charge more per car for years now. They’re focused on finding ever-better margins. Selling tons of cheap cars seem to be a far lower priority than selling a few expensive ones. And researching new designs and EVs in general cuts into profits.

Have you looked at Reticulum at all? I know it’s not a drop-in replacement but it can also do messaging over LoRa and it sounds like it’s a bit more resilient than Meshtastic’s flood protocol. Also more complicated though.

I’m only just getting into this stuff, so I’m basically wondering how they compare for someone with more experience using LoRa devices. Does it seem workable?

I’ve read the least about Meshcore so far - it looked like a corporate alternative to Meshtastic but I might not have given it enough consideration.

That makes sense, similar use case and a more active community - I’ll see what I can find

The explanation I saw in another conversation was that certain settings (I think one-pedal driving?) for regenerative braking make it feel like you’re constantly switching between accelerating and braking with no in-between. Like as soon as you let off the accelerator the brakes come on, no ability to just glide along, so it feels very lurching. I love the idea of recovering power from regenerative braking so I guess if I get the chance to look for an electric car someday I’ll have to make sure it can be configured to just happen when I actually use the brake.

It’s also worth noting that while resellers can be annoying they can also fit a useful role in a network whose job is to keep stuff out of the landfill. When I’m giving away something nice through Buy Nothing I might prioritize people who also give stuff away, or at least seem to participate in good faith but there’s been times when I had acquired some niche ewaste normal people don’t need that I was happy to give it to a guy who would almost definitely sell it on ebay because that was the only likely way it’d find a home (and if it nets a retired guy in town $20 that seems okay).

At the Swap Shop where I sometimes help out, we can’t afford to be as choosey, but volunteers generally know who the resellers are and when they show up. We often put new or nice stuff out throughout the whole time we’re open rather than just upfront so other folks have a chance to get it, and often set things aside for specific people when we know they’re looking for something. We also have a limit on how many items people can take per week.

Generally it’s less of a problem than it probably sounds like. Some volunteers get annoyed by people taking tons of stuff, but I’ve seen the piles of stuff that still goes into the waste stream because we don’t have room for it.

In the end of the day I think it’s a bit of a headspace thing - the worry/anger that someone will game the system can make you miss the sheer amount of good it can do even with a few jerks in the mix.

Seems like local industry only wants to focus on ICE vehicles so there’s not much to protect