Having grown up in the 1990’s I am all too familiar with the do-it-yourself, indie ethic: Without the internet that could support rich media, we were always at the mercy of the established Gatekeepers and had to devise our methods of self-promotion – whether this meant publishing zines with photocopies at the local Kinko’s or touring dive bars in our 3rd-hand van.

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But in 2020’s DIY and independent artists increasingly proliferated, then sort of plateaued. The rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) provided a new way for artists to sell and monetize their work, including the alleged ability to track provenance and track revenue in primary and secondary sales (which to an extent, and for a time it did, until wallets, coins, and marketplaces started failing.) The sustainability and long-term viability of the NFT market crashed and burned as copycat hordes oversaturated the market to the point of meaninglessness.

The explosion of creativity was witnessed when Hic et Nunc, the ecoNFT and Women of Crypto Art scenes converged, exposing a network of artists that encircled the globe ready to self-pilot into their autonomous future. It was a powerful and ultimately effective movement as major marketplaces scrambled to shift to a Proof of Stake framework. Alas, it eventually imploded when HEN’s single dev became disgusted with the dynamics of the incumbent aggregators looking for quick dividends and left the communities scrambling. The pitfalls of everything resting on a single developer. This was seen again when Twitter emigrated en masse to Mastodon, and 3rd party apps developed by single devs weren’t able to keep up. So it isn’t just about being free as in speech, but also distributing the load.

Separately the quiet expansion of ubiquitous online self-publishing platforms and tools, many of which grew out of the gig economy, and then were reinforced through the pandemic, have allowed virtually anyone with a smartphone, computer, or tablet to create and share their work with a global audience and maintain constant contact with their supporters. VR (and Zoom) had a hail mary renaissance as folks had to work remotely so were introduced to embodied virtual workspaces and conferences, and yet soon enough The Metaverse became a quantifiable, ownable, productization of an idea whose true developers wanted primarily to elude ensnarement. It was the indies moving the needle. In WebXR and game development.

But the tools are there for a new generation of artists, musicians, writers, game developers, and makers to bypass traditional gatekeepers and reach a wider audience than ever before. Platforms like bandcamp, etsy, IndieGoGo, itch.io, and Patreon are but some of the powerful tools and frameworks in the hands of the indies. Nonetheless, they are still prone to central control schemes. (bandcamp was recently acquired by EPIC games).

Opportunities and Challenges

In an era where we are mercilessly summoned by dopamine pumps, many people are seeking out authentic and unique voices that reflect their own experiences and values. DIY and independent culture offers an alternative to the homogenized and commercialized content that is often prevalent in mainstream media. That is when DIY isn’t attempting to resemble the mainstream, to please the almighty Algorithm.

But the rise of DIY and independent culture has been accompanied by some challenges and concerns: least of which is that when everyone is talking, no one is listening. Add to this that the Content Creator economy is an appropriation of the movement, dulling the edge of the art, the way Walmart took out a line of Grunge clothing, effectively inoculating the powerful social counterculture by packaging it up and selling it back to them.

But even as a shift towards “the democratization” of the tools becomes more widespread, the public isn’t really primed for this redistribution of responsibility; many are still of the mindset that stuff should just work, free, because. However, with a little awareness and communication, we could turn the tide towards a more holistic, truly decentralized new paradigm where the participants help to maintain, support, and expand the framework for self-expression and enterprise.

The rise of AI-generated art, text, video, materials and 3D meshes and even code is also challenging indie artists and developers, as the ability of AI algorithms to create increasingly sophisticated and realistic content makes it difficult to stand out. One of the main challenges for AI-generated art is the lack of accountability and tools for tracking provenance and paying out royalties, though others argue that media is in a common trust and when resynthesized represents the creative manipulation of the prompt engineer in the way Warhol demonstrated. But that discussion is beyond the scope of this article.

Another issue is the impending collapse of centralized large-scale social media platforms, which have become sometimes essential lifelines for independent creators, and also wholesale appropriators of that content in exchange for free, advertiser-driven access.

Reasons for the potential collapse of these platforms are mismanagement – their handling of user data, privacy concerns, and lack of transparency, failure to connect with the zeitgeist – failure to adapt and keep pace with changing user preferences and expectations, and the right to ownership and control of their content.

Furthermore, the switch to subscription-based business models for most creative commercial software (I’m looking at you Adobe and Digidesign – and Pantone), and the tax for seemingly endless streaming platforms can make it difficult for independent creators to afford the tools they need to thrive and create freely.

From Kinko’s to the Fediverse

The fediverse is a network of interconnected servers that support a range of decentralized online services, that include social networking, blogging, and file sharing. Mastodon is an open-source social networking platform that is part of the fediverse. Unlike algorithm-driven platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Mastodon allows users to choose and follow other users to control the content that appears in their feeds.

Users can also add other users to their “boosts” list, which allows their posts to appear in their timelines. This allows users to curate the content they see and connect with others who share their interests.

Additionally, Mastodon is decentralized and community-run, which means that it is not controlled by a single company or entity. This allows for greater control and autonomy for users and provides an alternative to the centralized and commercialized nature of many mainstream platforms.

Some of the fediverse’s other online services include:

Mastodon: a decentralized and open-source social networking platform that is part of the fediverse
Diaspora: a decentralized social networking platform that allows users to own and control their data:
Pixelfed: an open-source platform for sharing and discovering photography
Peertube: a decentralized video platform that allows users to host their content.

While far from perfect, both technologically and culturally, the rise of these open-sourced public-operated alternatives, lights a path towards a different kind of future, one that is not weaponized to exploit your dopamine daze.

Open-source software solutions, like GIMP for graphics and illustration, Ardour for audio, and Blender for 3D modeling, provide accessible and affordable, extensible, customizable options for DIY and indie artists and meanwhile, their participation in these solutions help to make them a more diverse, robust, public trust.

So with all that said, let’s explore some of today’s open-source resources for DIY and independent creators:

Accessibility

NVDA – An open source screenreader

Graphics, Illustration, and Design:

GIMP: Image editing tool for manipulating color, cropping and resizing, and optimizing file size for the web
Inkscape: Vector graphics editor for creating SVG and PDF files
Krita: Drawing and painting tool for use with a tablet
Bulma: CSS framework for designing interfaces
LazPaint: Lightweight raster and vector graphics editor

Video Editors:

Shotcut: Non-linear video editor with support for hundreds of audio and video formats and codecs thanks to FFmpeg, 360° Video Filters, and 4k/ProRes.
Olive: Upcoming video editor that features flexible node-based compositing

Tooll3: An incredible node-based motion graphics editor

Panorama, 360 and Image Stitching

Hugin –panorama photo stitching and HDR merging program that enables the creation of wide-angle to 360-degree panoramic photographs.

Audio Tools:

Ardour: Music creation software with support for AudioUnit, LV2, LinuxVST and LADSPA formats
Audacity: Audio software for editing, mixing, and recording audio

3D Modeling and Design:

Blender3D: a comprehensive 3D modeling and animation, video production, 2D animation, archviz software suite
FreeCAD: parametric 3D modeling software for 3D print designers
Meshlab: a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering, texturing and converting meshes
Poly Haven: Public asset library for 3D assets.

Web Development:

WordPress: Content management system and website builder
Bootstrap: Front-end component library for building responsive websites and applications
React: JavaScript library for building user interfaces
Threejs: a JavaScript library that enables developers to create and display animated 3D graphics using WebGL in a web browser.

Software Development:

Eclipse: Integrated development environment (IDE) for Java and other languages
Visual Studio Code: Source code editor and IDE
Git: Version control system for tracking and managing changes to code.

Makers and 3D Printing:

OpenSCAD: Program for creating solid 3D CAD objects
FreeCAD: General-purpose 3D CAD modeling software
Slic3r: 3D printing slicing software
Repetier-Host: 3D printing host software for managing and controlling 3D printers.

Writing and Publishing:

LibreOffice Writer: Word processor with advanced layout and formatting options
Scribus: Desktop publishing software for creating books, brochures, and other printed materials
Calibre: E-book management and conversion tool
Pressbooks: Web-based platform for creating, publishing, and sharing books.
Sumatra PDF: Thank god. A free, working PDF reader. Better than most paid options
Free PDF: Thank god. A free, working PDF editor that also adds signatures. Better than most paid options

Game Development:

Godot: Game engine and development platform
LÖVE: 2D game engine and development framework
OpenRA: Open-source implementation of the classic Command & Conquer real-time strategy games.
ScummVM: Allows you to run classic adventure games on modern hardware and operating systems.

Other Tools

AutoHotkey: The ultimate automation scripting language for Windows.

The growth of online DIY and independent culture has also been accompanied by some challenges, like the potential collapse of widely used social media platforms and the rise of AI-generated content. To support independent creators, we need to foster the tools and platforms needed to succeed beyond the walled gardens, and exploitative business models that fail to nourish them.

The post How Open Source Tools are Challenging the Status Quo (with a List of Resources) appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

Hrm, I will endeavor to turn off my verbose brain I think to get this across.

As I write this it is 5am in Los Angeles, my sister left for Toronto this morning en route from a pilgrimage to the mystic ancient city of Machu Pichu in Peru to a Tech trade show in Canton, China.  My uncle Paco is visiting from Ecuador and is sleeping in my bed, my girlfriend is sleeping on the floor (her grandfather is being taken off life support in the morning) and Josh Joudrie, my co-producer and soundman for Blue Dog Pict, visiting from Toronto, is sleeping on my couch.  Having nowhere left for myself to repose, I am up typing this chronicle.

We started this album three years ago.  An effort to continue to the work we did with BDP almost a decade ago.  Lest you don’t know me, I am not some balding wannabe ex-rocker seeking former glory days.  I am a kid who didn’t feel like I had yet reached the root.  So I decided it was time to move to the next set of songs and find a way to tell their unique stories.  I had no money in my pocket, I still don’t, but I have found in that, some amazing benefits – restrictions engender innovation, experimentation, cunning, tenacity, faith and play, and all of those put together lead to extraordinary ideas that may have otherwise been circumvented.

I would not trade a single moment of my tumultuous journey for any other.  I have learned so much and continue to learn.

Because we recorded this album piecemeal – parts in Toronto, parts in Los Angeles, parts in England via email – it has been a fascinating jigsaw puzzle to assemble.  After months, even years of configuring arrangements, painstakingly lining up different audio sources and trying to find their relationships, something as simple as bringing a completely new voice like Marc Thomas (of LA band Madras) to play guitars can re-liberate a song  and make it feel totally alive all over again.  You see, in the editing process, we find all the various pieces that we have recorded and build a comp. After cleaning it all up it feels a little stilted and after the fact.  Having a new musician with fresh ears come in and just replay it with their own unique brain makes it feel completely inspired and in-the-moment.  And that is because it is.

Last week, Ryan Brown came in to replay some snare and cymbal parts.  Instead we ended up playing brushes on the windscreen, chopsticks on pots, pans and coffee jar lids and throwing things around the room while Pro Tools was faithfully recording at 24 bits in the background.

Marc brought in a heap of pedals and I added my own to his arsenal.  We spent four separate days tracking guitars just for Killing Days; primary melodies, harmonies, swirling ambient washes, whatever occurred to us in the moment.

I would then assemble all of this discovery into a variety of stereo tracks, line them up, make a hundred decisions, and then when I would retire as the sun came up over Santa Monica Boulevard, Josh would wake up and take over, making sure the drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals all lined up, that their phase relationships were coherent and so on.  He is the ultimate audio tech head.  It’s why I keep him around 😉

Now, almost two, three years later, we are closing in on seven amazing opuses. Sonic journeys.  I have no idea what they sound like in relation to what plays on the radio.  None.  We even recorded “Box“, an acoustic album comprising several of my songs that didn’t want to be played by a band while doing vocals for this record – for me and for you – just to tide things over while we sorted out the rest in the meantime.

Sure I listen to stuff coming out now, but that has nothing to do with this other journey I have been on – that of making this record I decided will be called “Come To Life” about a year ago.  The name comes from a catchphrase for the annual Sky Pirate holiday (celebrated August 4th) I created called Robot Pride Day – “My daddy builds robots; we don’t tell anyone.  They have come to life.  Come to life.”

The lyrics are poems I wrote at some point (of trouble, typically) to remind my future self that I have endured in the past, and that I will endure again, and every time come out the wiser, the stronger and the richer.  They are about the soul, about the death of some of my closest allies, about faith, about us, about the future, about the past, about mystery, reason and benevolence and fear.

I don’t know if and when you will ultimately hear the fruit of all this labor and play and duress and fascination.  Maybe it will be your children.  Maybe it will all be buried under the ground.  But if you do, drop me a line and let me know if you tapped in to everything that is going on with it.  It is all bigger than me; the amazing talents of those involved, the adventures that led to its creation, and whatever encompasses the sum of its parts.  I want to know what it is and what it did.

I hope to have Come To Life ready by the end of 2009.

Thanks for listening.  Really.  Every time you let me know your ears are receiving these transmissions, they fill up some little emptied battery cell in my soul.

kms
los angeles, april 6th, 2009

The post Come To Life: One from the heart, about the new record appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

Just in case you are still wondering whether you should check out this whole “Social Networking Thing” – too late. It’s way tired. The tides are tiring of Facebook. MySpace has been declared dead. We are now halfway through the Web 2.5 paradigm; there are already so many books at Amazon.com about how to conduct oneself properly on Twitter that they outnumber books on Rocket Science.

In the meantime this whole Creative Commons Lawrence Lessig talked about seems to be finally taking hold. Exhibit A – the meteoric rise in popularity of Flickr.com that arguably saw a spike in numbers due to the fact that bloggers love auto-searching its commercially reuseable photostreams to spice up their otherwise banal output. How about podcasters who don’t make music and who don’t to pay for music? Podsafe sites are sprouting up everywhere – and they work – exposing hundreds if not thousands of indie artists to new audiences. Give it away now, indeed.

Web 1.0 was non-invasive, 1.5 was push, 2.0 – the Superpoke era – totally invasive, 2.5 is condensed and does away with the extra unneeded bells and whistles (be it complex licensing, “Flare” or Superpokes” – which may leave Twitter back at the 2.0 stage) – will 3.0 be customized to you – leaving behind all the trolling through huge atriums of people and their drama and restoring some personal quiet time back to you so you can carry on with… whatever it was you were doing before Status Updates disrupted your life?  Well, there is at least A generation that doesn’t remember a time without status updates so this point may be moot. 

3.0 will likely understand “you” much more succinctly and endeavor to cater to your needs with micro-precision.  It will comprise the evolution of the Tastemaker age.  You will type “dinner and a movie” into your search line and it will play concierge to your tastes and preferences – serving up not only menus and addresses and reservations for the restaurants that you love, but potential dates and friends available and compatible to accompany you there.

Marshall McLuhan said “you become what you observe” – and I fear that the more we are catered to, the less we are exposed to unforeseen variables, the more homogeneous and narrow our tastes will become.  Nonetheless, I will be happy to do without the time sink of being tossed around in the choppy waves of the collective id-sourced drama.  Sure you can tell me it’s my choice, that I can just turn it off and do something else, but I have ideas and works to promote and the old way of doing things holds no water.  I mean – post flyers up? Take an ad out in the Weekly?

How do you think Web 3.0 will operate?

The post Web 3.0 Train Now Boarding, Don’t Be Late appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

Here is how Geoff Hammill, writing for The Museum of Broadcast Communications, summarized the incredibly popular award-winning sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show:

As Mary Richards, a single woman in her thirties, Moore presented a character different from other single TV women of the time. She was not widowed or divorced or seeking a man to support her.[1]

Felicia Day’s eight-minute webisodic-turned-cultural-phenomenon The Guild revolves around the character Codex, a single woman in her late-twenties, early thirties who is not widowed or divorced or seeking a man to support her, but who holds a position of great importance in her online guild – that of the Healer.   The show can similarly assert itself as a pioneer in the new post-TV era entertainment spectrum.  Originally broadcast via YouTube and The Guild’s own website, the show was subsidized by viewers like you sending donations through PayPal.

The Guild centers around a group of regular people who know each other singularly via their membership in an online guild of adventurers in an unspecified MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game), but that any former Azerothian would quickly identify as World of Warcraft.

WoW Syndrome

Day, the show’s creator, producer and star, confessed that she created the show out of her own two-year addiction to the game. I completely empathize; I myself spent two years as the founder and leader of a WoW guild that had up to two hundred and fifty members at any given time. I would spend entire nights with my then girlfriend, side-by-side on separate computers, grinding away for loot. It defined the entire second year of our relationship. I think it was when I looked at the clock reading 1PM and I was still up from the night before hacking away at giant wasps in a virtual desert in hopes of finding some sort of epic ring that had a .01% chance of dropping that I bypassed all suspicion and went straight to absolute certainty, that I had a terrible debilitating addiction and that I had to stop.

A Night Elf from World of Warcraft
photo credit: antigone78

Stopping wasn’t easy; my strongest social ties now existed by virtue of the Dwarves, Elves, Orcs and Tauren that I had befriended in the game almost two years prior.  Using Ventrilo and TeamSpeak to talk over headsets, their real-life voices were indelibly linked to the image of their respective avatars. We had laughed, fought, in some cases hooked up (not me, and not necessarily exclusively in the virtual domain), broken up, mutinied, reunited, cried, lost everything, and fought to win it back again.  I could simply hang up the receiver and pretend it had never existed; that it was just some misstep in the way I spent my time between jobs.  This wasn’t some bad, obsessive Bejeweled habit – this was a real part of my life, my memories, my emotional landscape.  I would dream of Azerothian locales at night, of my friends and what we had said to one another.  My fingers would absently tap out key commands when I met someone for coffee.

Transcending the Micro-Niche

Felicia Day decided to go public with her story and is now reaping the rewards for her courage.  The eight-minute episodes were picked up by Microsoft and are available for instant download (free at that) on their Xbox Live and Zune platforms.  Episodes center around the interactions between the Guild members in the Meatverse (that’s the offline world for you newbies/n00bs/nubs) and how they feel at once awkward and entitled amongst themselves as they attempt to reconcile their alter-egos with their Earthly counterparts.

Largely populated by unknown actors (Day herself used to have a recurring role on cult hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the episodes are not only legitimately funny and clever, but in their second season have started to branch out into the downright avante-garde. In a recent episode – titled simply “Fight!” – Day, who plays the ineffectual, self-conscious character “Codex” (we only know the characters by their online handles) confides to her webcam that she is both torn and flattered by the competition between Zaboo and a local stuntman hottie for her hand.  When things go awry and she ends up empty handed, a spectral version of herself leaps from her body and runs away from the scene as we reach the closing credits.

In much the same way, the show is beginning to trascend it own campy micro-niche origins and drawing an ever larger crowd of onlookers.  Bookended by a sponsorship page from Sprint PCS, the show runs commercial-free, but nothing about its eight-minute per episode length feels unsatisfactory; in a time where attention spans and available mind-share is running at a deficit, this show is a quick entertainment bump that quells the hunger as readily as a Snickers Almond bar between meetings.

Give It Away Now

The music industry was ambushed by a lethal combination comprised of the mp3 compression technology and high-speed internet access for less than a monthly cable bill.  As it struggled to plug the holes in its sinking ship, it fought to maintain control, when in fact it should have done the counter-intuitive thing and just given the music away for free like radio had done for so long.  Sure, radio has ads, but not all radio: jazz and classical stations, NPR, they are funded by donations much like The Guild was in its early days.  If people appreciate the content you are creating, they will rally behind it.  But hindsight is 20/20.  The music industry could not possibly have projected the way out once the gates were overwhlemed by the Barbarians, any more than it could have imagined that Napster would evolve into Twitter.

In its second phase, The Guild has moved from the PBS model of public funding to the early television model wherein a show’s content was intertwined with content involving its sponsors.   With Sprint as its modern day Ovaltine, The Guild has a much larger, focused target group.  But the public is far more ad-blind than it was back in the days of Gunsmoke.  So long as Sprint doesn’t get greedy by asserting its product placement too heavy handedly within the midst of the video, they may very well have a new kind of success story on their hands.

The respite that would bring, after so many thousands of short videos consisting of people getting thwacked in the head with a two-by-four, is like mana from the gods.

The post The Guild is the Next Generation’s Answer to Mary Tyler Moore appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

]]> https://theculturepin.com/the-guild-is-next-generation-mary-tyler-moore/feed/ 0 392 https://theculturepin.com/salvation-and-grave-danger-compact-flourescent-bulbs-cfl/ https://theculturepin.com/salvation-and-grave-danger-compact-flourescent-bulbs-cfl/#respond Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:32:25 +0000 http://theculturepin.com/?p=312 Companies once sold nuclear fallout shelters, green-colored Palmolive and even duct tape to protect us from the scourges of humanity and nature (usually humanity). Now the compact florescent bulb is taking center stage as the solution to "oil" and global warming.

The post The Salvation and the Grave Danger of Compact Flourescent Bulbs appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

]]> In August of 2008, one of the frequent posters who goes by muralimanohar on my Freedom v.3.0 community boards posted a series of articles about studies showing the grave dangers of using compact fluorescent bulbs (or CFL’s) in the home nd workplace.  The first article she posted from WorldNetDaily presented some very alarming information:

Compact fluorescent light bulbs have long been known to contain poisonous liquid mercury, but a study released earlier this year shows the level of mercury vapor released from broken bulbs skyrockets past accepted safety levels.

Following a story reported by WND last year about a Maine woman quoted $2,000 for cleaning up a broken fluorescent bulb, or CFL, in her home, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection studied the dangers of broken CFLs and the adequacy of recommended cleanup procedures.

The results were stunning: Breaking a single compact fluorescent bulb on the floor can spike mercury vapor levels in a room – particularly at a child’s height – to over 300 times the EPA’s standard accepted safety level.

Furthermore, for days after a CFL has been broken, vacuuming or simply crawling across a carpeted floor where the bulb was broken can cause mercury vapor levels to shoot back upwards of 100 times the accepted level of safety.

Read the rest of that article here: 1 broken bulb pushes contamination to 300 times EPA limits

And yet January 12th 2009 cover story of TIME magazine featured a warning that the world must begin to seriously consider its energy crisis, and that the time to fix it is now.  Here is how the article opens:

This may sound too good to be true, but the U.S. has a renewable-energy resource that is perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available. It has astounding potential to reduce the carbon emissions that threaten our planet, the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our security and the energy costs that threaten our wallets. Unlike coal and petroleum, it doesn’t pollute; unlike solar and wind, it doesn’t depend on the weather; unlike ethanol, it doesn’t accelerate deforestation or inflate food prices; unlike nuclear plants, it doesn’t raise uncomfortable questions about meltdowns or terrorist attacks or radioactive-waste storage, and it doesn’t take a decade to build. It isn’t what-if like hydrogen, clean coal and tidal power; it’s already proven to be workable, scalable and cost-effective. And we don’t need to import it.

This miracle juice goes by the distinctly boring name of energy efficiency, and it’s often ignored in the hubbub over alternative fuels, the nuclear renaissance, T. Boone Pickens and the green-tech economy. Clearly, it needs an agent. But it’s a simple concept: wasting less energy. Or more precisely, consuming less energy to get the same amount of heat for your shower, light for your office and power for your factory.

[snip]

There are two basic ways to save energy without deprivation or daily effort. We can use more efficient machinery, like fuel-efficient cars that guzzle less gas, or those pigtailed compact fluorescent light bulbs that use 75% less power than traditional bulbs, or state-of-the-art refrigerators that are three times as efficient as 1973 models.

Article source: America’s Untapped Energy Resource: Boosting Efficiency

Interestingly, back in September, 2008, WorldNetDaily had a follow up on the incumbent campaign to promote the CFL:

Amidst all the current financial chaos, amidst global pandemonium and the spiraling economy, amidst the dangers from terrorism … you’ll be glad to know that the U.S. government is still hard at work protecting us from a threat so vile, so evil and so dangerous that it dwarfs all those other petty international and domestic concerns we face as a nation.

I refer, of course, to the incandescent light bulb.

[snip]

As an aside, it’s never been explained to me why, if compact fluorescent light bulbs are so superior, they warrant their own personal disposal facility to keep from poisoning the air, groundwater, etc. Nor has it apparently occurred to anyone that the energy required to conduct this specialized recycling of CFLs and corral the dangerous mercury completely offsets the potential energy savings over incandescents. The extra time, energy, cost and gas requirements for people to deliver their used CFLs to recycling facilities also counterbalance any individual savings in energy consumption. And how about the fact that almost all CFLs are manufactured in China under staggeringly hazardous and environmentally dangerous conditions by non-union state slaves?

[snip]

I don’t mean to cast doubt in anyone’s mind about the true environmental benefits of CFLs. After all, doubtless the medical complaints, the potential for groundwater contamination and the EPA requirements for cleaning up a broken CFL are all just right-wing nutjob conspiracy tactics to get We the Sheeple to bitterly cling to our incandescents just like we bitterly cling to our guns and religion.

The transition from incandescent to CFLs won’t be easy, of course. Mandated transitions never are. People tend to approach these things kicking and screaming because most folks have an annoying habit of wanting to think for themselves. Fortunately, the government schools are working on squelching that penchant, and in a few more generations we’ll be just like those genetically altered kids in the Star Wars “Attack of the Clones” movie. Can’t wait.

Don’t be alarmed when some houses burn down after CFLs are installed in circuits with dimmer switches or in track lighting (where they often smoke and cause fires). Also, people with light-sensitive medical conditions may suffer migraines, seizures, vertigo related to heart disease and other maladies. Even some green sites warn against a total ban on incandescent light bulbs, but doubtless they’re secretly in the pay of big oil companies or something. Besides, who cares? We should all do our part to save the earth, no matter what it takes or who has to suffer or die.

Article source: I guess I’m just a dim bulb

And so here we see again the extremes of opinion and typical alarmist polarities as a fundamental change in lifestyle is proposed.  So what is the stance of perhaps a moderate?

Strangely, it comes from a site called Ask Treehugger:

I quote:

Question: I have been in the process of converting to an all CFL household only to find out by trial and error (and some googling) that CFL’s fail very quickly in track lighting and recessed fixtures. In my online searches I have stumbled upon some real horror stories about people who have broken the bulbs in their homes which has resulted in thousands of dollars worth of cleanup to remove the mercury.

Response: Although mercury is a toxic pollutant, mercury exposures from broken CFLs are not likely to harm you and your family. This is due to several factors, including the amount and duration of your exposures and the specific type of mercury that you are exposed to.
Mercury in CFLs are present as elemental (or metallic) mercury. Once spilled, you can be exposed to elemental mercury by touching it, after which it can be eaten and/or absorbed through your skin. More importantly for health, you can also be exposed to mercury through the air, as elemental mercury vaporizes readily (essentially becomes a gas) and can thus be inhaled into your lungs. Breathing elemental mercury into your lungs is generally more dangerous than if you ate the mercury or absorbed it through your skin. Once inhaled, the mercury vapor can damage the central nervous system, kidneys, and liver.

These toxic effects are why any mercury spill should be handled carefully, including one that results from a CFL breaking. Having said this, careful handling does not mean that expensive or complicated clean-up of the spill is needed or that you should be worried about you or your family’s health, if a CFL were to break in your home.

This is because CFLs contain relatively small amounts of mercury — EPA estimates this amount to be 4-5 milligrams (mg) in a typical CFL. A spill of this amount of mercury is not likely to present any excess risk to you or your family. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows why.

Read the rest of the article here:  Ask TreeHugger: Is Mercury from a Broken CFL Dangerous?

But don’t be fooled by the se;f-conscious name of the source; the article is written by Helen Suh MacIntosh, a professor in environmental health at Harvard University.

In response to this thread, Freedom v.3.0 user Teens pointed out:

Just as an FYI – whatever rigorous testing you think products and chemicals are put through before they can be introduced to industry or to the public does not exist. A bare minimum of testing is conducted on consumer products and little to no testing is conducted on chemicals.

When something is discovered to be toxic it is the result of independant testing conducted by concerned scientists/public interest groups and the validity of such tests are immediately called into questioned by the companies promoting the product. So much (unwarranted) controvery is created and the regulating bodies take years to sift through the test results. The time it takes for a product to be taken off the market or deemed as toxic is laughable.

So where does that leave us? Ideally with a a slightly better informed set of considerations so that we can make our own decisions and come to our own conclusions.

I recently purchased a Sun Blaster bulb for my home so that I can grow some indoor herbs for my cooking, as I love gardening but have no yard. The package promotes the 75% savings (of what I don’t know, presumably energy? Electrical costs?), high output and of course “healthy energy efficient indoor lighting.”

Warnings on the back of the package caution:

• Minimum operating temperature is 8 degrees C/18 degrees F
• Use in dry location only
• Not for use in total enclosed / recessed fixture
• Do not use with dimmer or adjustable circuit
• Lamp contains mercury disposal properly (sic)

And then lists the following website: www.lamprecycle.org that turns out to be an information resource for what when and where to recycle, as opposed to a recycling center in itself.  I recommend checking it out and following some of the outbound links, particularly so as to find a recycling solution for your own CFL’s.

Summary:

Companies once sold nuclear fallout shelters, green-colored Palmolive and even duct tape to protect us from the scourges of humanity and nature (usually humanity).  Now the compact florescent bulb is taking center stage as the solution to “oil” and global warming.  There is some merit to that, as I suppose there is to living in a bomb shelter in the event of a nuclear holocaust.  But be informed when making your decision.  Recognize that as the alarms go off, companies will rush to capitalize on the heightened emotional climate and this rush may lead to not only sub-standard and knock-off, illegitimate products, but also a bum-rush by ill-informed consumers that could create more problems than solutions.

Skip forward ten years to the new cover of TIME wherein we are asking ourselves what to do with the millions of CFLs in homes and landfills containing trace mounts of mercury that we now have to clean up.

Cooler heads will prevail.

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