Ukrainian Company Produces Easy to Install Solar Panels to get Europe Off Russian Gas

Solar panels on grass

Oil is not just a reason countries go to war, it’s used during war to destabilize allies. Russia’s war in Ukraine is no exception to this as the Russians are profiting from selling Europe gas while threatening to cut off gas supplies to the continent at the same time.

A Ukrainian company, We Do Solar, started selling their easy to install solar panels the same month Russia advanced towards Kyiv. The panels themselves are impressive since they are a self contained system that integrates into existing home electrical system. The core idea is to get them on balconies of towers so individual units can augment their household energy consumption.


In theory, if every balcony in Europe had solar panels such as WeDoSolar’s, it would make getting off Russian oil and gas a great deal easier.

Designed by German engineers and coming insured as part of the offer, the lightweight panels weigh 1 kg each and plug into a standard power socket. The WeDoSolar Microinverter then pushes the power into the home grid, allowing the panels to power home appliances ahead of using the normal grid, since solar is always used ahead of normal grid power, claims the company.

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How Banks Destroy Your Future, And What You Can do About It

Money makes the world go round, but it can also make the world go burn. If you care about the planet, the people on it, or just life in general then you probably don’t want your investments to destroy what you care about. Investment funds that claim to protect the environment and it’s important to ensure that they actually do what they claim, and there are organizations that check that. As a consumer you can talk to your bank or financial advisor about this to bring more awareness to your concerns.

[#1] Blast the banks on socials.
Big banks are incredibly worried about their reputations, and they’re extra sensitive during their annual shareholder meetings. Those happen to be happening right now, so fire up those accounts and get to blastin’ about it.

[#2] Switch your bank.
If you don’t want your money being lent to fossil fuel companies, switch to a bank that won’t do that. There are a bunch of full service, FDIC-insured banking options out there to choose from.

[#3] Go outside and get loud!
Put on some pants, walk outside, and get loud about how absolutely f%&ed it is that banks are still lending to the fossil fuel sector.

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Find Products That Last a Lifetime (and those that don’t)

tape and tool

Having to buy things is always a nuisance, but sometimes things are needed, so when that happens be sure to get things that last. That’s the premise of Exit Reviews, a new site that asks people to review products once the product breaks. Thus, you can research which products last and which component is the most likely to break. It’s a neat idea to help stop people from buying weak products.

Find out how long products last, where they break, and how to fix them

?Common stress points

Find out what the common failure modes of product are.

?Quality declines

See if a product’s/brand’s quality has changed or gone down at some point. Let’s keep corporations accountable.

?Average longevity

Learn how long products of a brand last and compare them with the average longevity of a category.

?Repairability

Everything breaks eventually, but when it does, can you easily repair/fix it?

Check it out.

13 Year Long Study Confirms Bike Lanes Make Streets Safer for Everyone

Good Street from Streetmix

Bike lanes not only protect cyclists from negligent drivers, they protect drivers and pedestrians too. A longitudinal study reveals that it’s not the cyclists which make the streets safer, rather it’s the infrastructure that separates cyclists from giant metal slabs that matter. Bike lane only made of paint did nothing to change the dangers of driving; rather, physical barricades protecting people from cars are what make the difference.

It’s simple: protected bike lanes = a safer city.

After analyzing traffic crash data over a 13-year period in areas with separated bike lanes on city streets, researches estimated that having a protected bike facility in a city would result in 44 percent fewer deaths and 50 percent fewer serous injuries than an average city.

In Portland, where the population of bike commuters increased from 1.2 to 7 percent between 1990 and 2015, fatality rates fell 75 percent in the same period. Fatal crash rates dropped 60.6 percent in Seattle, 49.3 percent in San Francisco, 40.3 percent in Denver, and 38.2 percent in Chicago over the same period as cities added more protected and separated lanes as part of their Vision Zero plans.

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Stay Calm by Reading This Graphic Novel About Stoicism


Getting angry at things is easy, understanding one’s anger is hard, but by practicing the hard part you can become a better human. As always, it’s useful to learn from the work of people that came before us. Donald Robertson and Zé Nuno Fraga wrote and illustrated a graphic novel to help people understand that work in Stoicism. Their graphic novel Verissimus: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius is nice and easy to read and look at iy.
Stoicism is a philosophy that embraces calmness and thinking about oneself in relation to others (and what makes other people think too). If you’ve ever wondered about it then grab this book and give it a try.

I think this attitude of humility is central to Stoicism. We tend to minimize or ignore our own weaknesses in a way that makes us all slightly conceited and narcissistic. The more angry we feel, the more unforgiving and self-righteous we tend to become. We may disapprove of the actions of another but we tend to become less acutely enraged when we consciously accept that we’re capable of exhibiting similar flaws ourselves. Psychologists used to call this “projection” — when you point a finger at someone, three of your own fingers are pointing back at you! Marcus thought that as soon as we notice ourselves becoming irritated with another person, therefore, we should take it as a signal that we must have lost sight of this. We’re being arrogant and ignoring our own weaknesses and should, instead, stop and think — we should look within ourselves.

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