tangents from inspiration 001

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Do This: Vision

Webinars.
this concept is changing my life.
not just because webinars are going to help me make money to run Kollekt Project. they are going to do that too.

but, more, than that. more than the profitability. I find value because of the scale-ability, because of the accessibility! It is a platform that meets my message exactly where it is. I really will be able to do all of this and never sell out. I'll sell my intelligence, not my integrity. It's like the last piece of this puzzle has finally fallen into place. If you want to know more, sign up for my very first webinar.

Or don't and wish you had. seriously. #cockyfresh

Kollekt apiary

Kollekt Parties are centered around a group of themes that unit humanity. Each time a theme is explored, like bees in two social species united, an more specific application of the theme to the Kollekt Project is explored.

To incorporate real bees into Kollekt Project is a dream I do not believe I'm allowed to have yet. So I'm just going to explain the dream and see what happens.

The primary goal is an apiary of warre hives. Warré hives are lower maintenance, more natural to split. designed based on some very awesome (and free to read) bee research done by the hives' namesake: Émile Warré (he is not so famous, eh? even his french wikipedia page has not been translated into english).

Son but était d'obtenir une ruche la plus proche des conditions naturelles de l'abeille, tout en étant pratique pour l'apiculteur. Il préférait faire des bénéfices plutôt que des profits et recherchait les économies à la place de la productivité. Sa ruche reposait donc sur un faible investissement financier pour sa fabrication et son exploitation. Il souhaitait que tout un chacun puisse avoir une ruche et récolter du miel sans pour autant devoir s’équiper de nombreux outils d’extraction.

So this is my beekeeping philosophy too.

The next part of the dream is to build a structure that houses the apiary. It is necessary to protect the hives from the rain and wind that are a definite force to be reckoned with on this part of the planet. It doesn't matter to me how it happens, I just really care about protecting the bee hives from the elements.

Once bee hive parts are made, they are modular. I want to design and build warre bee hive bases that incorporate a way to measure the temperature, humidity and sound inside the hive. because I am really curious about it. Older beekeepers say they can understand what is going on their hives by listening to the bees in them. I have never found any data to back this up or not. But it seems an obvious thing to try an quantify. Plus, I love listening to a hive of bees.

The hives have to be made from wood. untreated, just the guts of a tree shaped into rectangular prisms of multiple shapes and sizes. I believe I have to build them because the only bee hives I can buy (as far as I know) in this country are Langstroth hives. The Warré hive selection may even complicate things with the local bee keeping association. Which, of course, before I even start an apiary, I would want to develop a relationship with them. For advice on the apiary and also for the opportunity to have demonstrators come to Kollekt Parties.

Bees would be a great demonstration to have at the Kollekt parties (that I am working to make happen once a month. Feb 6 down, march5 here we come) In my previous time volunteering with asylum seekers, I have found bees to be a very wonderful topic of conversation. Many people outside of the western developed world still understand bees as their partner in agriculture for the last 9000 years- with a perspective much like Warré.

Beyond actually creating a Kollekt apiary. I have thought of smaller, simpler ways to incorporate bees into the activities at Kollekt Parties. The only real dream I have in this category is: View Masters. and image wheels that are filled with pictures of flying bees. View master does not already have a "pollinator" themed picture wheel, as far as I can find, so they would definitely have to be made.

And I want to try to catch natural swarms too.

Kollekt Project Crowdfunding Video

In real life, I so want this to work. <3 only time will tell.

http://kollektproject.causevox.com/

what is Kollekt?

Humans are more similar than they are different. all the time.
Kollekt is a group that focuses on honouring and uplifting the unity of the human race. all the time.

Every human life is a treasure that has intrinsic and incalculable value.
Kollekt is a group focising on promoting the elimination of all types of human judgement that result in the destruction of human lives (both literally and figuratively speaking) for the present and the future.

Humans are a species at risk of becoming extinct because we value making money over the survival of our species.
Kollekt is a group working to bring focus to this irony. And dreams about changing the world such that dolla dolla billz are never valued over the creation of something from nothing.

Kollekt Project is a group that throws Kollekt Parties.
A specific type of party that celebrates human creativity, human connection and human survival. Anyone can throw a Kollekt Party. The party planning materials will be made available from this website in the future.

Kollekt Project is a group that provides resources for Kollekt Create.
Asylum Seekers are humans in the middle of transition, most likely for years of their lives. These are humans who are filled with creativity and intelligence, yet, they must have limited resources because of their situation. Kollekt Create is a way to provide access to creative outlets for a few asylum seekers at a time.

Kollekt Project is a group maintaining Kollekt House.
Kollekt House is a physical location for Kollekt to operate out of. A place where Kollekt parties will be held on a regularly scheduled basis. Kollekt House is also an attempt to use tourist-volunteering and crowd source fundraising to offer employment opportunities to refugees (people that used to be asylum seekers, but are now permanently integrating into the local community).

 

two social species united

Bees are everywhere that flowers, fruits and vegetables grow on the planet Earth. They are huge contributors to the biological diversity, or biodiversity, in the majority of ecosystems across the planet. Bees pollinate plants, allowing crops for human consumption to vary much more wildly than if plants had to rely on the wind and remaining pollinators alone to progress their reproduction. Biological diversity, or biodiversity, is essential for the future of humanity because we are healthier with a varied diet, but also because it protects against diseases, disasters and invasions. Biodiversity on the back of the bees. And I am talking about all the bees, there are many kinds- the bumble being my personal favorite. But I know, it's normal to be thinking just about them honey bees.

Honey bees are amazing. I encourage everyone to fall down more than one internet hole by reading about honey bees. Humans convinced honey bees to live inside man-made hives, the better to exploit them, for sure. Being cared for by humans has not really bothered bees. They have been kept by beekeepers (who were first farmers) for thousands of years. Later, as the honey bee ways of life became more understood, their society was held up as an example of what humans should strive for. Work yourself to death serving your hive and queen. Napoleon was a big fan.

The honey's are a social species of bee. They live together to survive and thrive. It's a perfect example of how a community survives better than a solitary way of life. Colonies of honey bees are in the tens of thousands. There are a lot of them, they need a lot of food. There are a lot of them, they make a lot of food. They make enough honey so that they can survive the winter. In bee standards, this is like super survival. Most of the other kinds of bee species, usually hanging out on their own, just die without even trying to survive. This super ability of honey bees to live through winter makes them all the more appealing to humans as they spread across the globe together. [insert thousands of years] Here comes the time where the agricultural industry starts needing to import pollination. Honey bees as portable pollinators were the natural choice. They were already domesticated.

Importing pollinators is necessary to the manufactured world of farming where mono-culture is created  in the ecosystem via human intervention. They transport hives of honey bees from one gigantic field or orchard of the same crop to another. Like on semi-trucks, for days, across highways. Bees that can communicate with each other about where they are in the world and where they can find food is in the world. Bees that have spent thousands of years eating from many different plants all at one time. They are put on trucks, finding only a single food source in each of their destinations. Then, right before winter, their honey is taken away and they are given corn syrup to eat instead. And then the beekeepers wonder why they are dying. it is because you are exploiting the resource.

Mono-culture is a farming practice developed to make farming as profitable as possible. The health of bank account balances and the survival of companies has been accepted as more important than the health and survival of the human species! Science says humans need biodiversity to survive and thrive. And mono-culture only exists because the impact on [survival of humans] is not THE measure for success in what everyone calls "just business". High numbers in a column called "money" is more important than the actual, real life, survival of human beings. It's just so obviously stupid, I wouldn't even sit through a movie with it as the premise.

Humans can and should unite around the health of the honey bee because its intrinsically linked to the health of humanity. Two social species united against the deception and destruction of greed. You should give a crap that the bees are dying, people. If you don't care about the bees, you don't care about yourself. There are so many simple ways a human can help all bees, not just the exploited honey bee.

Being a beekeeper is a way to help. But, do your research before jumping in. Because there are different kinds of hives to meet the needs of the different motivations that people have to keep bees. Langstroth hives were designed with the intention of taking as much honey as possible from honey bees. On principle, I am personally opposed to looking at bee keeping from a perspective based in exploitation. I want to keep bees in Warre hives on the roof of a building because I want to leave them alone most of the time. just let them be[e] :-D

human powered transportation

The most basic expression of freedom is the ability to go where you want to go. Humans evolved while spreading across the planet, roaming where ever they pleased. It is a romantic way of expressing it, eh? like their motivations were to frolic or something :-D But like with bees, we have spent thousands of years unable to comprehend the external physical limits of where we can go. Only in this last tiny moment of human history have we conceptualized any external physical limit at all. (and finally proved Plato and Pythagoras right once and for all). Not to mention disrupting the constraints of the space-time continuum. The ones that used to make it impossible to communicate with anyone on the opposite side of the planet, much less see their face while you are talking to them. It's mind blowing. You have to do some crazy mental gymnastics to not just sit slack jawed and wide eyed like the right ancient ancestor might do.

The ability for humans to travel to every corner of the planet is essential for a society that values the existence of the human species. We must be able to understand the similarities and differences of the members of our species. Humans learn best from their own experiences. I can talk until my head falls off. I can show you videos until your eyes pop out. Read account after account of what the locals think and do. But, you really can not experience my part of the world unless you have been here yourself. To be immersed in a culture that is not your own is a life experience that every human can use to become a better version of themselves, no matter how long the immersion. And the only way we can immerse ourselves in other places is by using the transportation infrastructure of the world.

Transportation infrastructure is important. Human powered transportation is the most successful method of transportation. IF we are valuing the future existence of humanity most, of course. Once given the option of burning something else to carry us places, humans stopped working on transportation that made them feel the burn of their muscles working hard. This is not an accusation of sloth. I am budgeting my energy more than any other resource in my life, I get why it happened. And it is good because there are humans who require the assistance of non-human powered transportation in order to function as well as their peers. So while there are benefits, technology as a tool has not been applied to the best of its ability in human powered transportation. The same can not be said about combustion. Combustion does create a lot of ways money can be used (and created, if we dig deep holes) from the commodity known as "energy."

Not that everyone has stopped focusing on human powered transportation: This guy who flies the human powered "airplane" and helicopter. I know him. we were roommates for a summertime once. He is and always has been a physical specimen that many aspire to be, but very few work hard enough to achieve. He is not the "normal" experience for a human in the business of human powered flight. Being in the business of human powered flight is rare enough, I guess. If we focused the global markets of the world to value high margins in the probability of human existence, we would be selecting for people like Todd. I can, personally, approve of that selection.

As a symbol for the importance of transportation to a globe-based society, I use the bicycle. because bicycles are the most accessible vehicle of the current transportation model. They pull people out of poverty. But any form of human powered transportation could be lifted up. Humans who propel themselves through the world are healthier than humans who rely on combustion to get from place to place. Healthier, contributing to a longer human life span, a positive impact on the value measuring 'the affect on the existence of global humanity'. You know, if we measured existence probability as we do money in free markets, the bicycle is a good investment.