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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

The #SolarpunkArtAugust prompt for 8/14 is "disability rights." This was a tricky one to draw. As a model for the kind of disability rights I want to see in the future, I drew my own glasses: nearsightedness is so thoroughly accommodated in our society, it doesn't even register as a disability.

A marker and pen drawing of my glasses. They have thin plastic frames, black on the outside, turquoise on the inside. And just to be clear, they're regular glasses, not smart glasses (gross).

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

The August 12 #SolarpunkArtAugust prompt is "solar ovens." In lieu of some art, I'm posting a photo of a little solar oven made by my six-year-old (with help from @clarabiesel.bsky.social ) from instructions in an engineering-for-kids book.

Photograph of a pizza box with a foil-covered square cut from the lid and propped up by another strip of cardboard. The inside of the pizza box is painted black and plastic wrap covers the square window.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Today's #SolarpunkArtAugust prompt is "permaculture." I wanted to draw a nitrogen-fixing plant, and settled on this lupine, since perennial lupines are also the host plant for the caterpillar form of Karner blue butterflies.

Marker drawing of a lupine with a Karner blue butterfly approaching. The roots of the lupine show nodules where symbiotic bacteria convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, fertilizing the soil.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

A simple sketch for today's #SolarpunkArtAugust prompt: "bicycles." This is the style of double-decker bike parking I was used to at train stations in the Netherlands. Bikes stand for so many forms of human-scale mobility: scooters, skateboards, hand-cycle wheelchairs. What do you want to see?

A pencil sketch of double-decker bike parking. One bike on the top rack is on a drawer that's been pulled out and folded down for access.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Today's #SolarpunkArtAugust prompt is "Urban gardens." For this drawing, I imagined reclaiming a city street for a community garden (in raised beds for now, because of poor soil quality), and there was plenty of room left over for walkways, bike lanes, and a tram line.

A city street with two- and three-story buildings on either side in various bright colors. The space that would normally be taken up by cars and parking is instead occupied by light rail, a two-way set of bike lanes, and a grid of raised beds.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

The August 9th #SolarpunkArtAugust prompt is "balcony gardens." My first thought here was towering garden-lined skyscrapers, but I decided to paint a multiplex with just a few units. Even this amount of density and shared green space feels transformational.

Watercolor sketch with ink outlines of a small yellow apartment building with balconies built around all sides. Every balcony has plants growing/hanging off, and one balcony is built around a tree next to the building.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

My favorite experience volunteering at a repair café was teaching someone how to darn a slightly motheaten but fabulous pair of pink trousers from a vintage wool suit. Our community makerspace had a just-right pink thread and they were so delighted to pick up a skill to save their thrift store find.

A pen and marker drawing of a pink pair of pants. The pants have a few mothholes, but one has just been successfully darned.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Today I illustrated a project idea from Stephanie Rose's "The Regenerative Garden: 80 Practical Projects for Creating a Self-Sustaining Garden Ecosystem." A solar-powered pump carries water directly to the roots in a vegetable bed, so that they get more water on sunnier days. #SolarpunkArtAugust

Pen and marker drawing of a solar-powered pump connecting a rain barrel to a small underground reservoir made from two terra cotta plant pots. A tomato seedling's roots have already wrapped around the water source.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

August 6th: Today's #SolarpunkArtAugust prompt is "community gardens." Here's a drawing from my memory of the last community garden I belonged to, in Minneapolis:

Marker and ink drawing of several 4-foot square garden plots, with a variety of vegetables and flowers growing in each one

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

August 5 is "little free pantries": think of a food bank with more flexibility, but also the potential for spoilage, vandalism, and pests. These challenges are not insurmountable: there are flourishing free pantries maintained by volunteers who curate the contents (and help themselves too!).

Marker and ink sketch of a platform holding a small cabinet and a refrigerator. A large solar panel forms a tilted roof with a backup battery on the side of the fridge. The cabinet door is open, showing colorful packages and tins of shelf-stable foods.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

The prompt for today's #SolarpunkArtAugust is "little free libraries." In a post-scarcity world, everyone should have access to information and entertainment, and this little free library in our front yard feels like a little piece of that future reality.

Marker and pen drawing of a blue little free library in a bed of pink, orange, and blue flowers

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

This is a t-shirt design I made for this year's "Rock to Rock" Earth Day group bike ride in New Haven, CT. The theme for submissions was "Mobilize for Climate and Community," which is very #solarpunk. I imagined this bike rider on her way to a protest, which the group ride was too, in a way.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I made this drawing with pencil, then marker, then ink from a fine felt-tip pen, based on a photo of some of our houseplants upstairs. They wouldn't survive in our local outdoor climate, so they are only alive here because of the mutual relationship they have with us humans. #SolarpunkArtAugust

Photo of a sketchpad lying on mottled blue carpet. The sketchpad marker-and-ink drawing shows a wooden latticework with potted plants hanging in the spaces between the beams. The plants are different colors of green, and a little purple. Some pots are empty, and there are a few spaces in the lattice still to fill.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

This August I'm participating in the #SolarpunkArtAugust art-along! Here's the lineup of prompts for the month. I'll probably do watercolors or markers with pen details afterward (I'm no artist but I can still have fun and learn). I can't wait to see what you all make!

Hashtag: Solarpunk Art August

Daily art prompts

8/1: plants
8/2: protest
8/3: voting
8/4: little free libraries
8/5: little free pantries
8/6: community gardens
8/7: solar sprinklers
8/8: repair cafés
8/9: balcony gardens
8/10: urban gardens
8/11: bicycles
8/12: solar ovens
8/13: permaculture
8/14: disability rights
8/15: third spaces
8/16: LGBTQ+ families
8/17: intersectionality
8/18: pollinators
8/19: desert solarpunk
8/20: snowy solarpunk
8/21: tropical solarpunk
8/22: libraries (all kinds)
8/23: agrivoltaics
8/24: mini wind turbines
8/25: guerrilla gardening
8/26: public transit
8/27: warming/cooling centers
8/28: urban tree canopy
8/29: weather stations
8/30: heat pumps
8/31: intentional living

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Murderbot, welcome to The War on Cars.

When we exited the boat at its first dock in a transit station in the adjoining zone, we had been able to take (1) a pipe transport, (2) a tram to another transit station, (3) another pipe transport. We were moving relatively quickly then and I made the mistake of getting optimistic. Then we got to a border and found the only option was to rent a ground vehicle and drive across two unaffiliated zones because both had zero mass transport. Zero. Mass. Transport. This is supposed to be a civilized space station, in space, why the fuck am I driving a ground vehicle to get to a fucking port on a fucking—
(Emotion check: I am absolutely fine.)

Photo of the cover of "Platform Decay" by Martha Wells. From the glossy shine on the cover and plastic stickers visible peeking around the bottom of the spine, you can tell it's a library copy.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Amazing! Reposting with alt text.

Screenshot of a social media post by Greenwich Police:

During the initial five-day speed study conducted prior to the program's launch, automated tracking recorded 36,922 individual speeding events across eight Greenwich school zones. This pre-program study was conducted without public awareness that speed monitoring equipment had been deployed, allowing for an authentic baseline measurement of speeding behavior in these areas.

The school zones included in the study were:

Brunswick Lower School
Central Middle School
Eagle Hill School
Glenville School
Greenwich Academy
Greenwich High School (two locations)
North Street School

After the public was notified that automated speed enforcement cameras would be installed in town, speeding violations immediately decreased to 15,319 events, demonstrating a significant behavioral shift through awareness alone.

Once the enforcement phase began and citations were actively issued, the number of speeding violations dropped even further to 2,863 events.

From the initial pre-program study to active enforcement, Greenwich experienced a 92.2% reduction in speeding violations within monitored school zones.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Just today I decided to take my kid and a wagon to the New Haven Stop&Shop about 10 minutes' walk away, and found two sections of *completely* unshoveled sidewalk. One was at a Citgo gas station — a conflict of interest as they benefit from car dependency — and the other was under an overpass.

Photo of unshoveled sidewalk outside a Citgo gas station. Many, many footprints have trampled the snow, but it's nowhere near flat enough to get a wagon across — I tried.

Photo from under an overpass, showing a kindergarten-aged kid walking through a trench made by many footprints in the snow.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

This expands out to (y^3 + 2y^2 + 4/3 y + 8/27) - (2y^2 + 8/3 y + 8/9) + (y + 2/3) - 1 or y^3 - 1/3 y - 25/27. A quick Desmos check shows I got this simplification right. 29/🧵

A screenshot of the graphs of two cubic functions: red and blue. The red function is the one we graphed before, with the root at about 1.75. The blue graph looks the same as the red graph, just shifted to the left so that its inflection point is on the y-axis.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Plotting this cubic polynomial on Desmos shows a single real root at about 1.75488, which is really close to the values I observed for f(N+1)/f(N), so I think I'm on the right track. Can I find a formula for this value? (The other roots being complex will make diagonalizing extra fun!) 27/🧵

Desmos plot of a cubic polynomial. The only root is marked at x=1.75488.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

I like to use a spreadsheet for quick-and-dirty recurrence relations. I'll check the first interesting row by hand: e(4)=5, s(4)=3, and m(4)=4. 16/🧵

A screenshot of a google spreadsheet. The columns are labeled N, e(N), s(N), m(N), and f(N). The "N" column shows the positive integers 1 through 9, and the e(N), s(N), and m(N) columns start with their initial values 1, 0, and 1. The "e(2)" cell is selected to show that it calculates the sum of the "e(1)" and "m(1)" cells, as in the recurrence relations. The "f(N)" cells show the totals of the other three calculated columns: f(1)=2, f(2)=4, f(3)=7, f(4)=12, f(5)=21, and so on.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

This sunday is Sun Day: a pro-social, pro-solar day of actions around the world. I'll be going to a family-friendly E-bike / EV event I only just heard about today — you can find an event near you here! www.sunday.earth/events Hat tip: @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social 's latest newsletter!

A map of the continental US and southern Canada showing a dense sprinkling of colorful Sun symbols, one for each Sun Day event.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

It was a good haul at the library this morning :)

Photo of my hand holding three library books: "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber, "The Grid" by Gretchen Bakke, and "The Lost Cause" by Cory Doctorow

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Biked from work to my kid's school to pick her up for a swimming lesson across town. Here's my view of her school stuff, my bag of work stuff, and her wet towel drying in the milk crate zip-tied to the handlebars.

Photo from the perspective of riding a bike. Attached to the handlebars is a black milk crate with a pink backpack, a hi-vis bag, and a rolled-up beach towel. Ahead of the bike is a road intersection, and behind it, a large natural cliff rising against the horizon.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

$The matrix product (3 4 \\ 8 7) (7 2 \\ 4 9) = (37 42 \\ 84 79), with the entries from the first matrix colored red (along with the matching tens digits in the product) and the entries from the second matrix colored blue (along with the ones digits in the product). Shown with the "Well yes, but actually no" Pirate Captain meme.$

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Here's a photo of me from when I visited Minneapolis earlier this summer. I happened to come across the same style bus shelter, and wearing the same shirt, as in my profile picture. Please pardon my facial expression; I seem to have gotten worse at selfies since 2022.

Photo of me using my finger to indicate the square spiral pattern of a glass bus shelter. My face is showing excitement, I guess?

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

I had a lot of fun trying to make a Venn* diagram with a kite-shaped region for kites, and a parallelogram-shaped region for parallelograms, and so on... It's a great exercise for people who feel like they "know this already"! *Euler, I know www.owenbiesel.com/2020/11/30/a...

A Venn diagram of quadrilaterals, where each region is shaped like the type of quadrilateral it contains. For example, a brown rectangle intersects a teal rhombus in a pink square, because the intersection of the set of rectangles and the set of rhombi is the set of squares.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Here's one I saved — apologies, I can't remember the source:

A multiple choice survey question with options "None", "Mild", "Moderate", "Severe", "Extreme", and "Prefer not to say". The question is "Age".

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Just cancelled Paramount+ for this reason! The terms of cancellation say "You acknowledge and agree that cancellation of your subscription is your sole recourse if you have any dissatisfaction, issue or concern related to Paramount+, ..." Well okay then!

Screenshot of Paramount+'s "We're sorry to see you go!" survey. The "Other (provide feedback below)" option is selected, and the provided feedback is "The loss of CBS's editorial independence means the loss of its customers."

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Uh, do we really fund pediatric medical research and presidential election campaigns out of the same pile of donations? Definitely not the *biggest* US issue right now, but still: what??

What is the Presidential Election Campaign Fund?

You can choose to have $3 go to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. This fund helps pay for Presidential election campaigns. The fund reduces candidates' dependence on large contributions from individuals and groups and places candidates on an equal financial footing in the general election. The fund also helps pay for pediatric medical research.

Your tax refund won't change if you choose this option.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system:

Message Regarding Pause on Federal Grants and Loans

Dear CSCU Community,

The White House Office of Management and Budget sent a memo to federal agencies Monday, ordering a temporary pause to all grants and loans disbursed by the federal government effective at 5:00 p.m. today.

At this moment, the scope of the impact of this memo on higher education and CSCU remains unclear. However, the memo does indicate that the term federal financial assistance does not include assistance provided directly to individuals, nor does it impact Medicare or Social Security. Our immediate concerns surround not only financial assistance to our students in many forms and other higher education grants, but also the other federally funded programs that so many of our students and their families rely on.

CSCU is closely monitoring the situation and has reached out to our partners at the state and federal levels. We understand the challenges this situation presents, and we will provide updates to you as new information becomes available.

Thank you,

Terrence Cheng
CSCU Chancellor

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Here's a pictorial illustration I made the last time I saw this problem, showing the case 16 + 17 + 18 + 19 + 20 = 21 + 22 + 23 + 24:

A diagram showing a three-dimensional array of balls, forming a brick with a 4x4 base of balls and 5 balls high with an extra triangular array stuck to the side. The slices from top to bottom have 16, 17, ..., 20 balls, and the slices from front to back have 21, 22, ..., 24 balls.

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Owen Biesel @owenbiesel.bsky.social · 23/08/2024

Corvid question that's been bugging me: I often see cartoon depictions of crow-like birds with yellow beaks, as in the picture book and board game shown here. Are corvids like these common somewhere?

The cover of the children's board game "First Orchard", showing a black crow-like bird with a yellow beak.

The cover of the picture book "In the Town All Year 'Round" by Rotraut Susanne Berner, showing a bustling town square. In the center of the illustration is a raven-like bird with a yellow beak perched on a large shade umbrella.

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