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never there when shit happens

apparently, yesterday during the day, the crew had a breakthrough, and when i got there EVERYTHING was clean, there was a stage built, a bunch of new initiatives. i guess T (crowbar) used her super powers again.

godspeed starstuff ☆★☆☆★★★☆☆☆☆☆

mild frustration

we've been a bit frustrated lately. our creeped out right is higher than ever. i think it's because of the extreme lack of hygiene of most of our residents. besides adopting two new dogs and not taking care of them (it's me and T feeding them and treating their problems), people not only do not clean, but also shit, break and generally mess up all over. we're 4 working (mostly 2, T and A), but whenever the people count goes up to 10 people (as it's been), we can't do anything for the house anymore, and can barely keep it at general cleanliness state.

one of the guests has repeatedly SHAT outside the toilet. what the fuck. last night they did the same thing again, this time moderately wiping it off with toilet paper. not good enough! there is still SHIT on the fucking SEAT! how hard is it to shit INSIDE a BIG FUCKING HOLE?

i can't blame our guests for leaving. it can be a bit overwhelming. level 4 looks like a minefield of dog shit, it's hard to walk around without stepping into a piss puddle. i could go on. plus the drunkenness, loudness, overbearing music, and a lack of interest / arrogance towards guests is too much. every time someone asks why a guest leaves, i feel an urge to say "because the place is covered in shit and arrogance". i would probably leave, too, if i kept being harassed, ignored or just lustfully stared at like some of our guests are.

the unfortunate side of this is that since we're putting our effort in maintenance, the project is slowing down. luckily, some guests catch on to this and help out more. over and over again, anarchy works if you don't have anarchists around. street punk anarchism seems to be just another excuse for libertarian individualism, a capitalist ideology, which makes it kind of ironic when the agent of individualism is wearing a t-shirt with a big (A) for anarchy on it. most of the self professed anarchists should be self professed libertarian individualists, that would ease the stereotype burden on other anarchists (like anarcho-syndicalists and others).

it's funny when an anti authoritarian guest imposes his way on everyone and shouts "this is anarchy! i can do whatever the fuck i want!"

on a lighter note, we've successfully built our first solar panel. we're at the finishing stages, and i'll post a story on how to do it soon. so far, i'm very happy with the progress, it's my first one and it works! also, a bunch of new toilets are working out great. the big compost pile smells wonderful, like a big cow dung mountain.

godspeed starstuff ☆★☆☆★★★☆☆☆☆☆

heat wave hangover

another party, this time for R's and my birthdays. i was so tired i just collapsed after dinner. i can't do anything with this heat. too bad we didn't have that many people yesterday, but i guess it's harder on a week day.

S is back, moderately healthy. he is still pretty bad, but getting better. our recent guests were also really fun people. we're not having that many quality requests these days. CS is desperately awkward. one of our most recent guests had no idea what a squat was and she filled out the questionnaire. it's hard to say something truthier than the truth. we're looking for a way of sending a back message that helps people understand what it's about. i know that some people are somewhat lacking in the way they write their first message, but can turn out to be people interested in the project. so we might do a second layer of communication on approvals.

other than that, same old! here's the add for the mixer sale: http://lisboacity.olx.pt/mesa-de-mistura-peavey-pv6-como-nova-c-garantia...

godspeed starstuff ☆★☆☆★★★☆☆☆☆☆

free means fun

T's birthday party was awesome. she did an amazing job with level 2. we had the bar, a dance floor, lounge, and made it roomy and fun. we got our mixer + laptops + cellphones + strobe light + lighting all to run off the car alternator and a 1kW inverter. now the impressive bit: for a whole night we spent maybe 10€ in gas. add to that free food + free booze for about 40€, we got everyone wasted and having fun for next to nothing.

i'm a bit unhappy with this mixer, so we're planning on selling it and getting another one. we're definitely needing a good sub woofer though.

we have a lot of pictures ready on our recent projects, but no laptop means no card reader means no pictures.

godspeed starstuff ☆★☆☆★★★☆☆☆☆☆

low tech hiatus

we're out of laptops at the moment, so we haven't done that many updates. until we set up computers at the house again, we're down to intermittent updates. we have some photos ready for the report on our dry toilet and our (small) green patch on the roof.

our new (damaged) solar cells arrived. i will be training anyone interested in it, on how to build solar panels for a fraction of the price (e.g., 100W panel for about 80€ instead of 1000€). it's a recent discovery of mine, the fact that solar energy is incredibly cheaper than advertised. anyone can have a solar system for about 200€. compare that to the 3000€+ price tags you see in hardware stores. it seems more likely that this big "eco tax" is just another way to discourage alternative power systems.

yesterday we had a visit from 3 former/final chapitô students, a tip by Tiago (thank you!). they are looking for a place to do their shows, we showed them around and they liked the place. it's only a matter of time and whether they really are into that kind of life.

we're, as usual, slowly progressing towards our goals. i think we'll have a proper sub woofer soon. our amp is wimpy but for what it's for, it's fine. that means since it's T's birthday on saturday, we'll be raving again (i suspect). so soon another kawak kay sound system tryout.

godspeed starstuff ☆★☆☆★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Chill Out bar progress

I've been away from my blog activity, my netbook...er...fried. Meanwhile, i started again with the chill out. I got up decided to ignore the annoying warmth of our portuguese summer and put my hands to work again.

This time i decided to paint myself the walls. I was waiting for someone (more gifted than me) to paint the walls. But since nobody showed up interested in doing something i though about painting with plain color, perhaps with a dégradé or something to give more life to that level. The idea is to give color (looks much better now) and also to be prepared for somebody to draw something over it. So the chill out is more colorful and still has walls for someone to be creative! Also we have wayyyyy many goods thanks to I and her mom, and J's mom. 2 new couches and a lot of dishes, furniture, books, Vinil cds, uff! Etc... Yeah, moms are still the best even when you're squating a building. I'm also thinking about asking my mom some paintings she already has. She's an awesome artist, check out her tiny web gallery (http://manuelabarros.pt.vu/)

About the freeshop i'm still not sure what to do. A(IT) cleared everything and made a selection of good things that we should keep, and organized the IT area. Still, it looks poor and slovenly, specially compared to the new form of the chill out. I have a design for the freeshop in my head for a long time, the only problem is that i don't have the materials to make it. Let's see if we can bring something up.

I am so, so, so proud of our dry toilet!!! Thank you tori for your help and giving us the drive to do it, finally! It smells good, the floor is not wet anymore. Wonderful.

I also love and am proud of the solar system that J built. Although we need a better battery it's wonderful to be able to get energy without paying for it and without wasting the environment. Never though about living with solar energy, although i always though it was the better way to get energy.

So basically i am really happy to see the house going through the path we designed at first. Also happy to see everyone getting along, laughing, interacting with our CS's much more.

That's all folks

<3

humanure

we've successfully built a dry toilet. thanks Tori for the input and skills. it's much better than the previous one, with no smell at all and no need to carry around water buckets. also, we put it in our compost pile for the first time and it didn't stink remotely as bad as i expected. just a brown sludge. not as smelly as our leftover compost. we might need a big composting bin now to speed up the process. since humanure can carry diseases, we need to be more careful about it. we'll be writing a story soon on how we did it.

we've also successfully started our green roof (a tiny patch). it still needs about 100L of soil, which we still have to get. i abandoned the full water filtering system on all of the farmed soil. instead, we will collect the rain water and add a filter after the collector. this makes the set up much easier. getting off the water grid is probably the hardest step these days. we are also using the concrete tiles as a replacement to the stone layer, since it allows for quick water flow down. we will use the existing water collecting layer and the pipes, so all we need is to plug a container to these pipes.

we're also starting our own solar panel construction. i got some damaged solar cells on ebay and we'll be running trials on building and using these. i'll write more on this soon.

now that summer is starting, people tend to abandon their dogs. that's what happened last week, when someone abandoned two puppies near our street. O took them in, so we now have two more dogs. they are friendly but clearly traumatized. they are great guard dogs though.

other than that, we were helping a couple out until they found a place to stay. the guy was clearly troubled, and once he realized he couldn't stay, he robbed us and left (this is the current established perspective on what happened). nothing much. he took the house money box (about 50€ in), my mp3 player (which is worth nothing these days) and money from A's pocket (about 3€). again, people on survival mode show a very obvious behavior pattern, which i will try to summarize.
1) they are unlikely to say thank you or i'm sorry, even when you give them food or shelter (he fit this, she didn't)
2) they tend to empty praise people around them excessively (he fit this, she didn't)
3) they tend to be overly friendly, yet selfish and hoarding (he fit this, she didn't)
all of this is mainly connected to, in my opinion, self preservation and awareness of ingroups. someone on survival mode will not care for anyone but themselves. but they know human groups are tribal and that they need to create a "non zero sum", a fake reciprocity that creates a sense of understanding, so that they are welcome in a community. he did this with skill, though he wasn't the most skilled we've hosted so far. he was friendly and funny and tried to compliment and be friends with everyone. yet he never said thank you for the food or appreciated what we were doing for him. he enjoyed our surplus while he could, and once he realized he couldn't move in, he took off with our money.

i do wonder how this works. the fact that the people in the house weren't willing to take him in caused him to go on self preservation mode. people off the street are frequently like this.

we later learned that he had done this before to his girlfriend. he also stole money from her and skipped rent. her perspective is that he's bipolar. my view is that he is exploiting her for being insecure. i can find no other explanation for someone putting up with this kind of behavior. when he left, he didn't say goodbye to her at all. he left her behind and took off with his stolen goods.

it is tragic that the people that need help are the ones that end up falling in the selfish preservation loop. like previous people that lived with us, the pattern repeats itself over and over. when self preservation is an issue, people will hoard, be selfish and violent. but self preservation is a fable, made up in the junkie / social outcast mind. we live in a society of surplus, with food, water, electricity everywhere, with safe streets. no one is "out to get us". there is no need for a survival mode approach, except if one choses to make that the defining story of their lives. inevitably, it will leave them alone, or with enablers, that will perpetuate the cycle of abuse and violence.

healing this is incredibly hard. it requires a very positive setting that allows for each individual to grow out of their vicious cycles. unfortunately, at our house we can't really do it when someone is so down this loop. they require full professional help. maybe one of our future helpxers or surfers can turn out to be a psychologist and help us out. but more and more, we're understanding that sometimes we have to push people away to preserve our community. this is a tremendous political defeat for me. over and over again, anarchy doesn't work because of anarchists and their selfish authoritarian ways.

in line with this, check out Chris Hannah of Propagandhi on the G20 protest.

i updated my personal feed, all i'm sharing is now on one URL, if you're also interested in my other topics of interest. the address is http://starstuff.collected.info/ .

godspeed starstuff ☆★☆☆★★★☆☆☆☆☆

first request study results

as i did previously, i continue to do data analysis on the requests we get on CS. this time the experiment is a simple test on how much does a picture matter.

i chose two pictures, one anonymous, simple and gray (though customized to reflect my hair and clothes), and my usual "laying in the grass" picture. then, every week, i swap the pictures (on tuesday afternoons). i do this to remove weekly effects (more requests on some days than others).

the first data set, from 6 weeks, has a total of 40 requests. 28 for the grass picture, 12 for the anonymous picture. this is over twice the quantity of requests. even though we all expected it, it's now pretty clear that not only a picture matters, it makes a difference on whether someone will take time to read your profile. with the anonymous picture i got NO filled out forms. there is a direct connection between the attractiveness of your picture and the likelihood of getting a request. i guess we all suffer from prettytitis! the irony is that i remain the same human being, no matter what picture i put up. that is a sad but true statement on how shallow we are.

godspeed starstuff ☆★☆☆★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Kat's account of her stay (and their trip)

Kat and Shaun (CA) stayed with us about a month ago. i just found her account of the trip, including this little bit about their stay here:

The next day we hitched again waiting for about an hour we decided to go further up the highway where we discovered the turn off for the highway leading directly into Lisbon , we were hitching from the wrong spot that entire time, Ten minute wait and we were picked up by a trucker from Brazil who would drop us off in Lisbon.Communication was difficult so it mainly happened through drawing pictures.He was a very sweet man though , giving us water and food.He couldn't drop us off directly inside Lisbon so he left us at a train station where he forced us to take money he offered us because he felt bad that he couldn't take us all the way.Another angel.We took a train and after about 2 hours walking around Lisbon in the blistering heat with giant bags we finally found the place we were to stay .It was one of many abandon buildings on the street a big yellow building with graffiti, It was the squat.

The place was six floors with Anarchy designs everywhere and some really cool punks that lived there as well as their dogs.They have great plans for the place and it seemed when they looked at it they already saw what it will one day be.They planned to make a few bars , a huge garden on the roof , a lecture room , a giant free shop and generally a very cultural place where everyone can live together and build something truly amazing.We spent a few days there , eating great food in great company , talking about nomad bases and how to make everything work, playing with puppies ,drinking wine and jam sessions that lasted hours, laughing, sleeping on the roof and swimming, and even talking about having the hitch gathering there, the only issue was that they didn't really want any legal problems if there were that many people.The place has everything it needs to be amazing even a private swimming pool up the street! The city center of Lisbon was beautiful , every building was a work of art , the churches were beautiful and also cool on those 40 degree days , old street cars with children hanging off the sides, we ran into a parade going down the street loud drums and music people dressed in beautiful colourful costumes, some as monsters who were scaring people in the crowd, a man with a scary mask and a big hairy costume grabbed me from the crowd and gave Shaun a thumbs up , whatever that means.A really neat thing to see though .The only thing about Lisbon is if your a vegetarian and want to eat out , you really have no choices because EVERYTHING is meat .Our last day at the squat as we were leaving we were saying our next stop was Sines , they asked if we had anywhere to stay and we didn't , so Cervario (not sure if that's how its spelt) A Brazilian punk gave us a phone number of an old women he stayed with there , he called and asked her if it was OK and she said of course.He said he thought she won the lottery because she lives alone in a big house over looking the ocean with four floors.

http://casarobino.org/2010/06/living-and-dieing-portugalspain

again, more on nomad bases here: http://nomadbase.org/

thank you

it's been 4 months since we moved in. a lot has went on, but one of my personal contributions was to give this community an on-line presence for several reasons. the main was to sample the multiple realities phenomenon, but since only two bloggers are left, it remains more a desire than a reality. but another main aspect of it was to share our experiences with YOU, our readers. but i never expected we would be growing 120% a week, that we'd end up by having on-line visitors from all over the world, interested in our little project.

so thank you for visiting our website, for sharing our links, for discussing our actions or just being interested in different ways of living and acting. and visit, whenever you want, our house is your house!

thank you! i love you!

<3

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