Meanwhile, Up Here in the Future Part Whatever
Lottery's up to $400 million so I bought a ticket. Worth a shot, right? Back when I was homeless I dreamed about winning the lottery a lot, as I saw it the only way I'd ever get off the street. And of course I thought of what I'd do with all the leftover millions after my own needs were seen to. Buy John and Mel a new mold-free house, pay off Liv and Jennifer's mortgage, apartment for Logan, of course, stuff like that, pay back Interfaith Homes and make huge donations to them and Bethesda Cares, the two organizations who actually did get me off the street.
(The VERY first thing I'd do is buy this motherboard and this graphics card, and a dual-channel watercooling setup with baby blue and pastel pink dyes, and build the gayest, most trans pride-themed gaming pc ever.)
But that'd still only a be a drop in the bucket. What to do with the other 95% of a $122.9 million (after taxes) lottery payout?
One thought I've been having fun with is a solar power farm. In Texas, employing immigrants and American Indians and homeless people who will all be encoraged to register to vote, flipping Texas (38 electoral votes!) blue. ^_^
Silly idea, maybe, but now I find myself imagining how it would look. In the northern hemisphere the sun is aways to the south, so the ideal layout for a solar farm is a rectangle with the long axis stretching east-to-west. North of that, housing for the employees and their familes, also running east-to-west and using the classic passive solar design. I wonder if you could stack three or four on top of each other, stair-step fashion, in homage to ancient Pueblo architecture. Make the top of each clerestory window section flat, and it's the front porch for the next home up, while the sloped forward part of the roof
is space for more solar panels.
Shops, schools, clinics and community centers interspersed, maybe extending underground a couple storeys for maximum cooling. Solar panels on roofs to supplement power from the solar farm. Parks, sports fields and other outdoor community spaces on the north side, at least partially shaded by the homes.
North of that
, vertical farms, six, seven, ten storeys high for maximum sunlight, also stretching east-to-west as wide as the community and solar farm. The grocery stores in the communities get the same deliveries as grocery stores everywhere, but they can supplement them with local produce. While sinking carbon and producing oxygen.
Since water's a big deal in the American west, waste water from the community is recycled and food & blackwater waste is composted, providing the farms with irrigation and fertilizer. Maybe windtraps
An electric light rail system to link them all together for easy commuting, including an east-west line right behind the community row linking all the homes, stores and other community facilities together for shopping or visits. Elevator shafts to link the different levels of stacked housing to the ground and to the rail stations, and--because this sadly has to be anticipated--going down to underground shelter/panic rooms for when the right-wing immigrant-haters show up to do a Greenwood.
A quick glance at a map suggests (blood-red) north Texas close to I-40 would be a good place. Day trip access via the interstate to Amarillo, and trips home on holidays and long weekends for employees from the Navajo, Hopi, Mescalero and other reservations in New Mexico and Arizona. Rocky Mountain National Park and the Grand Canyon are both within a 10-hr drive, along with several national forests and the starting point of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail.
And a relatively small population there could, in perhaps only an election cycle or two, be enough to flip the TX13 congressional district. Dems have come close to winning the governorship and senate seats; added onto the already-existing purple trend, we could push them over the top. Of course I can't tell my employees or their families how to vote, but I'm not going to be hiring any white supremacists if I can help it. Nor likely to get job applications from billionaires. And who else votes Republican these days?
I wonder if there are any plans for high-speed rail running anywhere near I-40?
Of course, for all the advantages of passive solar homes and all the disadvantages of the alternative, my sci fi brain is tempted to consider this instead for housing:
(The VERY first thing I'd do is buy this motherboard and this graphics card, and a dual-channel watercooling setup with baby blue and pastel pink dyes, and build the gayest, most trans pride-themed gaming pc ever.)
But that'd still only a be a drop in the bucket. What to do with the other 95% of a $122.9 million (after taxes) lottery payout?
One thought I've been having fun with is a solar power farm. In Texas, employing immigrants and American Indians and homeless people who will all be encoraged to register to vote, flipping Texas (38 electoral votes!) blue. ^_^
Silly idea, maybe, but now I find myself imagining how it would look. In the northern hemisphere the sun is aways to the south, so the ideal layout for a solar farm is a rectangle with the long axis stretching east-to-west. North of that, housing for the employees and their familes, also running east-to-west and using the classic passive solar design. I wonder if you could stack three or four on top of each other, stair-step fashion, in homage to ancient Pueblo architecture. Make the top of each clerestory window section flat, and it's the front porch for the next home up, while the sloped forward part of the roof
is space for more solar panels.
Shops, schools, clinics and community centers interspersed, maybe extending underground a couple storeys for maximum cooling. Solar panels on roofs to supplement power from the solar farm. Parks, sports fields and other outdoor community spaces on the north side, at least partially shaded by the homes.
North of that
, vertical farms, six, seven, ten storeys high for maximum sunlight, also stretching east-to-west as wide as the community and solar farm. The grocery stores in the communities get the same deliveries as grocery stores everywhere, but they can supplement them with local produce. While sinking carbon and producing oxygen.
Since water's a big deal in the American west, waste water from the community is recycled and food & blackwater waste is composted, providing the farms with irrigation and fertilizer. Maybe windtraps
An electric light rail system to link them all together for easy commuting, including an east-west line right behind the community row linking all the homes, stores and other community facilities together for shopping or visits. Elevator shafts to link the different levels of stacked housing to the ground and to the rail stations, and--because this sadly has to be anticipated--going down to underground shelter/panic rooms for when the right-wing immigrant-haters show up to do a Greenwood.
A quick glance at a map suggests (blood-red) north Texas close to I-40 would be a good place. Day trip access via the interstate to Amarillo, and trips home on holidays and long weekends for employees from the Navajo, Hopi, Mescalero and other reservations in New Mexico and Arizona. Rocky Mountain National Park and the Grand Canyon are both within a 10-hr drive, along with several national forests and the starting point of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail.
And a relatively small population there could, in perhaps only an election cycle or two, be enough to flip the TX13 congressional district. Dems have come close to winning the governorship and senate seats; added onto the already-existing purple trend, we could push them over the top. Of course I can't tell my employees or their families how to vote, but I'm not going to be hiring any white supremacists if I can help it. Nor likely to get job applications from billionaires. And who else votes Republican these days?
I wonder if there are any plans for high-speed rail running anywhere near I-40?
Of course, for all the advantages of passive solar homes and all the disadvantages of the alternative, my sci fi brain is tempted to consider this instead for housing: