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content/Stories/across-town/index.md

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+---
+title: "Across Town"
+date: 2019-01-03T18:27:07Z
+description : "As I came out of the associative coffee shop of my neighbordhood, I was hit by a ray of light, straight to my face, and needed to stop for a few seconds. I had spent the night before drinking some home-made beer a friend had been brewing for the past months, and let me tell you that it was one of the finest beer I had recently. The sweet aromas of orange and cinammon where very welcome, but now I had to pay the price."
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+---
+
+As I came out of The Green Fairy, my neighbordhood's associative coffee shop, I was hit by a ray of light, and needed to stop for a few seconds. I'd spent the night drinking, some home-made beer a friend had been brewing for the past months, and let me tell you, it was one of the finest beer I had recently. The sweet aromas of orange and cinammon were very welcome, but now I had to pay their price.
+
+Thankfully, this coffe shop is my little retreat. It’s not really a coffe shop actually, every one that comes in takes turns in opening and taking care of it, but nobody will serve you here. You can find couches, a kitchen, and it’s up to you too make your food and stuff. I can stay there as long as I want, and usually just sit on a chair in the courtyard behind the building, listing to the birds sing, the sound of the water and people discussing around me. In winter, the brick walls stay dry and warm, birds come for refuge, chirping as the sun rises.
+
+Anyways, today I wasn’t able to stay all afternoon as I usually do. I needed to see my friend Jules. He had gathered with a few friends to reopen a old building downtown, and they where starting to put a hydroponic system in place to grow their own food. There first though was to connect to the water grid and use a pump to bring water, but we wanted a better and more autonomous system.
+
+During my time in France, I had the chance to come across a collective that wanted to open-source agriculture, and try to simplify the tech we use. I learned a few things about punching holes in PVC and bamboo pipes. But today, I was gonna be useful, even without a drill.
+
+When I was 5, my grand parents bought me and my sister a bike for christmas. It had litte wheels on the side, and I went around the house and the garden with a big smile. The day after, we went to the closest parc, and since then I haven’t come off my bike’s saddle.
+
+I started walking toward the docks, only a few minutes away. I left my bike there last night, cause I wasn’t really able to ride it, if you see what I mean. I turned left on Proudhon street, and I arrived in front of a big warehouse. You could see a huge painting on the facade : a bicycle wheel with plants and flowers growing around it, painted by a crew of local artists and squatters, a few years back. Behind a big door, Mike was waiting for me. Mike's a cool guy. He's part of a collective who lends small four-wheel bikes with trunks to move stuff around. The solar panels on the roof power the electric batteries, so even people that aren’t very strong can move their cats and dogs around in the city. While I was lost in my thoughts, Mike slid the door open in front of me.
+
+As I passed through the door, everybody went silent. Mike looked at me, eyes wide open, and stared for what felt like an eternity. He started laughing, laughing so hard that everybody followed, and I was dazzeld as to what was happening.
+
+> “You didn’t take a shower last night did you ? ” He asked.
+
+> “Well, no, I didn’t have time, why ? ”
+
+> “Go look at yourself in the mirrow”, he said, in tears.
+
+Fuck. My friends drew a huge fish, right in the middle of my forhead, again. The’re getting better at drawing fish, I thought, as I was cleaning my face.
+
+Mike told me to come see him in the back of the warehouse as I was whiping off the last bits of ink. He had prepared my ride for the day. I had the black-and-white stripped trike ! It also had a big eye painted on the back, which I always found funny because it made me think of the way some butterflies have “eyes” on there wings to scare birds. We painted the eye to scare cars !
+
+> “As always, you’ll need to bring it back and service it with Thapelo, they’ll be the one in charge this afternoon…”
+
+> “No worries Mike, you know how I drive !”
+
+> “Yes that’s what worries me…”
+
+I took the keys of the trike, and said goodbye to everyone. I pressed on the pedal as I started to roll.  
+
+I left the docks with my trike, and decided to take the bike lanes on the side of the river. The trees shade most the ride from the sun, and delicatly brush in the wind. I always like to see people rowing and swim, now that the rivers are clean. I never though I would of seen that one day, but it took only three years to get clean, and fish have now started to come back.  
+
+I followed the river until I got to the new communal center, made a turn, and rode further into the city. As I arrived near the 20th district market, I stopped, and parked by bike.  
+
+I heard that a new bamboo pipe shippement had arrived, and I wanted to get a few for the hydroponics system. I also wanted to go see the gardener’s corner to get a few seeds and, if I could find it, a hop plant. I’ve got a projet brewing in my mind for that one.  
+
+![Art by www.liekeland.nl](market.jpg)
+
+The market in itself was in a huge hall, made of cast iron. It was all painted red, in rememberance of the blood people spilled building it at the time. It had a glass roof that provided a lot of sun all year round, and in the winter, big curtains of vibrant colors where put up during a small festival in the first week of november. Every family, collective and there friends make the curtains and restore the old one during the party, and at night it becomes a huge music-hall… I love this place, sometimes when I go through it, I can almost hear last year's music in the back of my head. I was arriving to the building section of the market.  
+
+Indeed the bamboo pipes had arrived. I took a few, and asked if someone wanted to help me move them to my trike. A young person smoking a cigarette told me that they would be there in a minute. I offered to teach them how to make a herbal cigarette with minth and hazelnut leaves in exchange.  
+
+Moving the pipes was the easy part. We just took each pipe on each side, and stacked them on the roof. I was wondering if the tryke could hold the weight, but what really worried me was hitting someone while turning. I guess a small red cloth will do the trick, __I hope__...  
+
+Once the pipes where loaded, we sat down. I had a small bag of smoking herbs, and handed them a small batch. It was a 70% hazelnut and 30% minth mix, but I explained you could mix it to your taste. We shared a cigarette and went each our ways.  
+
+Now, for the best part of my day : the gardener’s corner. It’s filled with the most exotic plants, and, among other things, you can find a few herborists that have some of the best teas to cure the worst hangovers. At the entrance, you can spot a big pot of boiling water, where you can make yourself tea. I went to exchange a usb key for a few herbs.  
+
+I took my usual, and asked around for a hop plant. An old woman, who traveled half the world after feeling her home in rural East Asia told me about a Berliner that had a few plants she grew in her garden. My german wasn't that good, but I managed to update her computer in exchange for two hops and a morning glory.  
+
+After loading all of that in my trike, I pedaled to the building my friends had opened. It was an old, grey building that was once home to a horrible police departement. When the last officer of the city gave his gun back, the bulding closed, and nobody wanted to do anything with it. Until recently. It wasn’t very welcoming, but flowers were starting to bloom all over it... The parking had been destroyed and upgraded to a garden. My morning glories where soon going to be climing all over the walls. Someone was playing guitar and children where learning how to make a wind turbine.
+
+![Art by www.liekeland.nl](gardening.jpg)
+
+As I unloaded the pipes, Jules shouted at me from the roof : “There you are ! We thought that you got lost in the gardener’s market again !”
+
+“Not today ! Come help me bring all of this upstairs instead of standing in front of my sunshine !” I shouted back jockingly.
+
+Bringing the pipes up to the roof was not easy, even with ropes. They were pretty heavy, but they especially moved around so much that we nearly smashed a window. It took us the best of an hour.
+
+Once all of the pipes were on the roof, we started measuring them to fit the water irrigation system we designed. Two buildings next to ours had big tarpaulins that fed into pipes, that connected to a big water tank on our roof. The system could store quite a bit of water, which would be good enough for most of the year. From that tank, we needed to bring water to the different parts of the roof, and the different plants.
+
+![A hydroponic system with pvc pipes](hydro.jpg)
+
+Naseem, a friend of Jules, had studied electric-less water control systems and came up with something truly ingenious : a small black glass contraption. When it's heated by the sun, it creates a void that pumps up water from the tank into a Pythagorean cup system. Gravity then pumps water by itself. It took me some time to understand exactly how it worked, it seemed like magic for me.
+
+When it’s raining, no need for water, and went it’s cold, it takes more time for water to evaporate, so it’s fool-proof year-round.
+
+The difficulty lied in calibrating the system, and that's what took most of the evening. It was interruped by a water battle and a few water bombs from the kids downstairs, but we fought back with water guns !
+
+As the sun went down, we started to feel tired. The sun had been shining all day, but the LEDs were now starting to turn on, and it was becoming harded to see what we where doing... I headed to the cellar where a few jars of grass, a welcoming present from the couple down the street. When I came back up, everybody had stopped working. I offered everybody to have a joint, and someone brought out a guitar. Why is there always a guitar ?! The barbecue was well under way, and everybody needed to rest a little before eating.
+
+I climed to the top of the water tank, and, as I was sparking up, I admired the sky, where the setting sun had drawn big orange strays.

content/Stories/fixing-my-arms-with-free-software/Fixing_arms.md

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+# Fixing my arms with free software
+
+https://repair.org/agriculture

content/Stories/fixing-my-arms-with-free-software/index.md

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++++
+draft = true
+categories = ["English","Story"]
+title = "GNU/Hand and how I fixed my arms with free software."
+displayInMenu = false
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+featuredImage = "https://n07070.xyz/img/fixing-my-arms-with-free-software/cover.jpg"
+description = "In the spring of 2021, I was on vacation in Switzerland with my family. We had this beautiful chalet that was passed down from generation to generation, an hour drive from the closet city. We were lost in nature, surrounded by the mountains and... cows. They where raised by a farmer which I tried to help fixing his machines, loosing an arm in the process. I then tried to make the most out of it, while keeping the control over my body, by keeping control over the software."
+date = "2020-08-01T13:37:00Z"
+displayInList = true
++++
+
+In the spring of 2021, I was on vacation in Switzerland with my family. We had this beautiful chalet that was passed down from generation to generation, an hour drive from the closet city. We were lost in nature, surrounded by the mountains and... cows. Our neighbor was a friend of my mother, and had raised cows, like his father before him. And, that made our surroundings looked like a garden, thanks to the freshly-cut grass, that he fed to his cows in winter. I never asked how much land he had, but I guessed that he had to cut down, dry, pack and store more than 40 tons of grass. And he needed to do that twice during the short two months of summer ! So, family, friends and neighbors came together to help with the grass cutting. It was part of the life of the valley, and we all worked hard but joyfully ! After the work, a big barbecue was waiting for us... Having all this help meant that we he worked less, and was capable of going on, in otherwise hard times.
+
+As for myself, I had no problem working with everyone in the fields. I was doing it since I was young. But, when I was not on holidays, I worked in a co-op that helped people around Europe connect to the internet and learn how to use computers, in either form. Recently, we had met a group of farmers from Iowa, in the US, who had been working with Ukrainien hackers to develop a free software for their trucks and [tractors.](https://repair.org/agriculture). It was amazing, because thoses farmers had shifted from "we don't need no internet" to being fierce advocates of the free software movements, some even learning to code !
+
+So, when my neighbor came up in haste to the fields, and shouting my name, I was first pretty scared ! He was a though guy, even if he was nearly 60 years old, he was square, and had been moving mountains around since he was a kid. He looked at me, and his eyes went from concern to sadness. What was happening ? He paused, and as he took his breath, he started to explain... His transporter, a Aebi eVT 850, being fully electric, had been acting up for the past few days, and had refused to turn back on after he deposited the grass in his barn. He asked me if I could, being an computer guy, look into it and do something. He told me that even though the Aebi tech people could look at the issue right way via a LTE connexion, it cost nearly 300.- CHF an hour to do so ! And he didn't have that kind of money, plus, the weather was getting cloudy and if it rained on the fresh grass, it would rot and be lost !
+
+He swore in swiss-german, cursing himself for having sold his old diesel transported. I could feel his anger, and it was partly because of this kind of problem that I had bought a diesel from 1999, even thought it wasn't C02-free, it never broke down like that. And if it did, repair manual had been published on the internet. I told him I could give a look, but I need to get my computer and a few cables. Can you believe that they didn't even provide a USB cable with you truck ? 
+
+I went back to my house, while he went to his. He went to get a cross. I got my computer, a USB key, a USB cable, some electrical wires I had lying around, and a voltmeter. Was I a 21th century car mechanic ?
+
+// I try to fix the motor, and while doing so, I unplug everything, but the motor has an capacitor / battery I didn’t see, and it chops of one of my arms
+// Shock, horror, comma
+// Insurance ? I was fixing something while not authorized 
+// New arm : robotic, but proprietary
+// Super fancy : lots of function, but thus very heavy, and very expensive ( paid for by the cooperative insurance )
+// Fuck that, I’m gonna do my own 
+// 3D print it
+// Flash it, update it
+
+
+---
+
+
+

content/Stories/solarpunk/Solarpunk.md

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+# Solarpunk 
+
+I just got off my boat in this beginning of summer, 2034. The sweet coast of France, whased upon by a hot wind, where small trees now grow everywhere, replacing the old farms have brought a very peacefull atmosphere. I always loved arriving back home, the _depaysagement_ I felt in Greece was starting to get heavy on me. You would think that one of the biggest harbors in the region would be huge, all made of glass, steel and concret. But this one in constrat was the nicest I knew of. And I think that the light that fell from the glass roof, passing in the flowers that grew on the roof, all made of tiles of hexagonal wood pains, brought something to it. As I walked off the boat on a small deck I could only stop for a second and take a deep breath, pausing for a second and look at the harbord. The gardens that surrounded it, nowhere on earth where they so pretty. Now that all public space where made common, people had started to care about the places they lived in and made every parking spot into a garden, every mall into a community center and every townhall into a maternety, they was so many more place for beauty to arise from. 
+
+I need to get to my friend's house before noon but so much had changed in the past two years. Before, when you arrived here, you needed to take a bus or a cab to move around. It cost money, took time and it really wasn't enjoyable. Now, the tram made it possible for everyone to move around really fast. Being free and automated, they where trains every few minutes. I got on the one of 12:14, but I could of took the one before. I just needed a second to smoke a small joint I had left in the back of my pocket.

content/Stories/solarpunk/index.md

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+date = "2019-01-02T22:25:20Z"
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+
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+