solbear

I have tried to make some self-watering plant boxes where I 3D-print some containers with holes to act as wicks to absorb moisture into a top container with soil. The wicks themselves are packed with soil.

However, some white mold quickly builds up around some of the holes (fairly self-limiting though, it does not get much more than what you see in the attached picture after some days since I first noticed it). I emptied the water and re-cleaned the box, and wiped off the wicks. The existing water had a slight sewage smell to it.

For now, the boxes are directly exposed to light, but will be built in by a wooden enclosure in the "final product".

1. Should this be of any concern for the plants growing in the soil? They will be edible greens.
2. Can I avoid this, while still using my 3D-printed parts?

I recently freed up some space indoors to form a seedling station that will allow me to transfer plants out on the balcony during the growing season in my country, and for indoor pots in the off-season. It is a two-story shelf on the top of a cabinet.

However, there's no windows in this room, so I need some grow lights, and I require these lights to be controllable from Home Assistant. I had originally thought I could just use a microcontroller flashed with WLED and connect some LED-strips to this, but apparently it is only compatible with these ternary output LED-lights and not any full-spectrum LED strips.

Ideally I would be able to have control over sectors (at least two in each story) and be able to tune the red:blue ratio. However, I will be happy if I can land on a solution that allows me to control each story independently, which I guess I can achieve with a regular system connected to a Zigbee switch or something like this.

I found tons of these full-spectrum LEDs on Aliexpress for fairly cheap, but I am inherently skeptical about buying anything from here from a quality and safety perspective, and especially stuff connected to mains.

Anyone here have a sweet setup for this they'd like to share?

While English is still the de facto lingua franca, with the US burning bridges to Europe like there's no tomorrow, and the UK having left the EU, should they adopt an easy-to-learn auxillary language?

I'm thinking of an language like Esperanto, but not necessarily that. I was intrigued by Esperanto and went through the course on lernu.net and found it easy to pick up (though I am by no means fluent yet). While it is constructed, it was developed without any modern linguistic knowledge, so another option could be to construct a new language for this purpose, or adopt another already developed language that would serve the purpose better (I don't have an overview of what is out there).

I know there are several official languages already, but I imagine that leads to a lot of overhead. An auxillary language could make communication easier, and make it easier for citizens of any member state to participate in the Union, and would to some extent remove any power asymmetry resulting from native mastery of a language.

Good idea? Poor idea? Why? Why not?

There's so much so-called "news", but most of it is just noise. In this situation, it seems easiest to either A) get consumed by it, trying to follow everything and reading every "he said what?"-piece posted or B) become more or less apathetic and avoid news altogether.

To be able to make proper choices and help move things in the right direction, B) is not an option, as you need to understand current events to at least a minimal level, but A) leaves you just as clueless, overflowing with useless information, with a heavily worn-down ability to be source critical, not remembering where you read any given "fact".

So how do you keep up to date with current events? Have you found a good way? Am I mistaken in my above assessment?

I'm launching a little balcony gardening project that involves water reservoirs. I don't have much experience with these kinds of projects, so I need a little help.

Due to some dimensional constraints, I will need two regular plastic containers (your typical storage containers), and I was hoping to get away with only including a way to fill one of them. That means I will need to connect it to the other in some way. So I thought I would just drill a hole in both of them and stick a pipe between them.

1. What is the best way to drill holes in plastic without risking any splitting?
2. How do I make sure that the holes are water sealed afterwards? Can I glue around the pipe and plastic box?

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/7559522

I want to write a novel that takes place sometime in the latter half of this century (let's say 2075), where the premise is that we've more or less achieved what could be described as a Solarpunk society globally, albeit not a perfect utopia. I am just an amateur, so don't hold your breath for the next literary masterpiece, but I am hoping that, if finished, it could at least inspire some people to envisage a better future. The novel itself will only use this as the setting, as a contrast to the often bleak and dystopian visions of the future - the plot will not be related to how this was achieved.

I am currently looking for inspiration for the world-building. What have happened between now and then on a big scale, particularly in terms of geopolitics? How did the tensions of today resolve so that we eventually landed in a Solarpunk society? I am happy to read both critical analyses of probably futures as well as speculative fiction on what could become, but that still remains rooted in the realm of the possible. The world should be mostly stable at the point of the novel, but many turbulent things could've happened on the way there.

A few examples of things I am looking for:

• Which regions/peoples gained independence? Are The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland reunited, is Scotland independent from the UK, is Catalonia a sovereign state? Other examples outside of Europe?
• How have e.g. the African Union and/or the East African Federation progressed, and what role do the play on the global scene? What about other would-be superpowers?
• How did what today looks like an uncrossable divide between the left and right in the United States resolve? Was there ever a new civil war? What did that look like? Are they still united? Any new states?
• Has the United Nations undergone any changes to become a more effective organization?

Have you read or seen anything like this that you could share? Articles, books, movies, TV-shows etc.? Do you have any thoughts of your own you would like to share?

I want to write a novel that takes place sometime in the latter half of this century (let's say 2075), where the premise is that we've more or less achieved what could be described as a Solarpunk society globally, albeit not a perfect utopia. I am just an amateur, so don't hold your breath for the next literary masterpiece, but I am hoping that, if finished, it could at least inspire some people to envisage a better future. The novel itself will only use this as the setting, as a contrast to the often bleak and dystopian visions of the future - the plot will not be related to how this was achieved.

I am currently looking for inspiration for the world-building. What have happened between now and then on a big scale, particularly in terms of geopolitics? How did the tensions of today resolve so that we eventually landed in a Solarpunk society? I am happy to read both critical analyses of probably futures as well as speculative fiction on what could become, but that still remains rooted in the realm of the possible. The world should be mostly stable at the point of the novel, but many turbulent things could've happened on the way there.

A few examples of things I am looking for:

• Which regions/peoples gained independence? Are The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland reunited, is Scotland independent from the UK, is Catalonia a sovereign state? Other examples outside of Europe?
• How have e.g. the African Union and/or the East African Federation progressed, and what role do the play on the global scene? What about other would-be superpowers?
• How did what today looks like an uncrossable divide between the left and right in the United States resolve? Was there ever a new civil war? What did that look like? Are they still united? Any new states?
• Has the United Nations undergone any changes to become a more effective organization?

Have you read or seen anything like this that you could share? Articles, books, movies, TV-shows etc.? Do you have any thoughts of your own you would like to share?

I'm in my early thirties and adamantly childfree. I'm lucky enough to be in a long-term relationship with someone who brought up her desire to be childfree on more or less our first date. But I am not having too much luck with my friends from childhood and university - they all seem to be wanting kids, and learning of their pregnancies leaves me with a feeling of sadness. I don't hate kids and think no one should have them, and I am happy for them if they truly wanted this, but I also know what them having kids will mean - we are essentially putting our friendship on hiatus, and I still don't know whether waiting 10 years for the kids to be a bit more independent and not requiring as much attention will mean I suddenly have friends again, but somehow I very much doubt it. And I also don't want 10 years without other friends than my girlfriend. She is in very much the same situation, and while we are good at making the best out of not having kids and stressing about having them, we both would want to be able to hang out with good friends once in a while, both common between us, but also some that are exclusive to each of us.

My assumption is that this is quite common - so I am hoping someone would like to share some success stories in turning this situation around. :)