StrayCatFrump

Yes. My company decided to shut down the local office to save money (kept by the bosses rather than being distributed to us, of course). So some of us became remote indefinitely.

Generally, I love it. I can "commute" in my PJs, and avoid spewing a lot of carbon into the climate just to ship around my sack of flesh. I can take breaks throughout the day to tend my garden, and play music to help myself think. I don't have to worry about packing a lunch, or wasting time and money and social energy eating out in the middle of the day. Hell, I can go take a nap when I don't have any meetings scheduled and feel the need.

However, it does take its toll. Not having a direct, face-to-face, human connection with folks throughout the day harms the associations that build solidarity. And finding ways to do one-on-ones and continue organizing the workplace is proving next to impossible. So I'm honestly not sure it is worth it at this stage of labor struggle. In a more ideal world—once we've won a few crucial victories over capital (and perhaps state)—I see no reason why many of us couldn't work from home, and even move those jobs that require more direct, physical labor closer to those homes.

That's funny, because it literally does work in many places. You might want to refine your idea of how everything works, since you are simply wrong. 🤷

"One man's wild dream." Bleh. Flowery words for yet another bunk propertarian sea-steading project. I mean, he was literally planning to mine the shit out of the ocean floor and sell away more of the ecosystem to the capitalist market in order to create his Utopia. At least there was some acknowledgment of that at the very end.

Very glad the opportunistic scientific exploration happened along with it, though.

Given the horrendous history of /r/Anarchism's moderation and the fact that Raddle is a direct continuation of that garbage, I'd say it's both no surprise and no loss. Let them go honeypot and jackboot themselves into oblivion. The unfortunate thing, of course, is that they've controlled a forum with a very obvious name for half a decade, and can shepherd a lot of unknowing users into their cesspit with them. But there's probably not a lot that can be done about that.

Correct. The ground is a MASSIVE heat sink, but can only absorb and transmit heat so quickly (how much thermal conductivity it has; just the mathematical reciprocal of insulation/resistance). Having a large contact area and/or water helps a lot. If you can get down to the ground's natural/ambient water table, it'll conduct a lot better than dry dirt and rock (not to mention that evaporation can help with sufficient air flow).

If you make use of flowing water, probably it's just going to be a matter of the temperature of the source of water, as it'll likely eclipse (depending on rate and volume of flow) what gets absorbed by the ground. Unless it's a closed loop, in which case you're essentially just increasing the surface area of ground you're transmitting to (and you'll need to take advantage of convective flows like with the air, or you'll have to actively pump to keep the flow going).

All technology, by definition, is artificial.

Probably passive (taking advantage of energy and natural laws already present in the environment, like wind and convection) vs. active (making use of secondary forms of power like electricity, burning fuels, etc.) is a better distinction. If all you gotta do is e.g. at most open some vents at one time of day and close them at another, and not rely on the delivery of external power sources from human industry, calling it "passive" is pretty fair.

Absolutely. Lots of societies have used passive heating and cooling systems, well-suited to local climates. And we could learn a lot from them to help decrease our energy use.

There's a lot of places you can build (partially) underground to take advantage of relatively stable ground temperature and natural insulation, too. Ain't just fictional hobbits that lived in holes in the ground.

A worker controlled company will be just as profit focused

First off, you're wrong. Capitalist-owned companies have a mandate to grow due to the ever-increasing demand for return on investment, and those who control the company have no disincentive for the maximization of profit (this shit is as old as the field of economics itself, so you might want to read some leftist literature and catch up). Worker-owned organizations can choose to grow or not, as they wish. And they have built-in disincentives against the maximization of profit, as they are the ones who must labor to produce it, and they also must suffer the consequences of bigger and more complicated work environments. So while capitalist organizations will ALWAYS be forced to the limit, worker-owned companies have much more room to choose, and to consider factors like how their behavior affects their communities, their environment (externalities), and the rest of their quality of life.

Second, I wasn't talking about a single capitalist company. I was talking about a whole economy built around them (capitalism). That, by the way, inherently includes talking about government (the modern nation-state is built to protect, uphold, and enhance capitalism, for capitalists). And it also inherently is about culture, which as I already pointed out is influenced by economics every bit as much as the other way around (far more so, in fact).

...harvests reflected sunlight hitting the back of the device, offering an unconventional route to producing higher energy yields for less space and cost.

Less cost seems probable. Less space really does not. Gonna probably need some mirrors to reflect onto that back surface, and it's still going to require the same amount of incident area of solar radiation.

Mirrors are pretty cheap, though. So seems like a win.

Consumerism is a cultural problem, not a supply chain issue.

It is both. Capitalism encourages supply chains to be formed based purely on metrics such as cost on the production side. Nothing is planned further than what will minimize the cost to the company, so that profit is maximized. While roughly the same amount of consumption is done by the working class in its consumptive capacity, this does lead to greater consumption and waste by corporations as part of the production process. When we take control of our workplaces, we will be much better able to account for and make rational decisions regarding such externalities.

And to some degree, it's also pointless to try to separate "culture" from "economics". They influence each other. People don't consume simply to consume, but because of the pressures put on us by the system. We drive not just to drive, but because we need to get to work and school, and because capitalists have destroyed our public transportation options. The reverse—our affect on the system of capitalism—is much less powerful these days, as we've allowed ourselves to become powerless and subjugated ourselves more and more to the class war. Certainly cultural elements will be necessary to overcome this, like building a culture of loyalty to one's fellow workers and the unions which empower us, and eschewing advertising's daily effects on our habits. But to imply it is "just cultural" is missing a lot.

Euclidian geometry is used for things on a globe.

non-euclidian spaces are those that are not spherical. Such as a flat earth.

This is incorrect. Euclidean geometry deals with planar geometry such as that which cartesian coordinates are used to describe. I mean, here's a quote from Wikipedia:

More generally, n Cartesian coordinates specify the point in an n-dimensional Euclidean space for any dimension n.

Spherical surfaces are even used as kind of the classical example of non-Euclidean geometry. For example, you can form a triangle along great circles on the surface of a sphere and have all three angles be right angles (90-90-90); something not possible in Euclidean/planer geometry. See the linked text.

That aside is both a nitpick (the curvature of Earth is small enough on the local scale of a city that the differences are negligible) and it is wrong, as cartesian coordinates are planar and aren't useful for accounting for spherical curvature. "Euclidean" and "cartesian" are basically synonyms for this purpose.