CJ Trowbridge
The world is very complicated and broken. Let's try to understand together.
Please Support My Work
You can directly support my work in the following ways, or by emailing me at cj@cjtrowbridge.com.
Ethereum Wallet: 0xf9988ed19214B0Fff5aE539C080E83e3f3846dca
Back To School!
I have just completed my academic journey and am excited about building a better future based on a deep understanding many of the problems we face.
- Undergraduate Studies @ Sierra College:
- ✔ Computer Science
- ✔ Sociology
- ✔ Social Justice Studies
- ✔ Women's Studies
- ✔ Behavioral Science
- ✔ Natural Science (Astronomy + Physics + Chemistry)
- ✔ LGBT Studies and Queer Studies
- Undergraduate Studies @ SFSU:
- Graduate Studies @ SFSU:
Current Projects
What Am I Working On?
Our new primetime tv show about how to build off-grid intentional communities has just finished airing and is now streaming everywhere. It is the culmination of years of work in the Permaculture Mutual Aid Network, crowdfunding and buying lands all over the country. We have put these into non-profit land-trust ownership as free communities for people to be able to live and grow food and build more communities for free forever. We also host free permaculture conferences at these lands to help people learn the skills they need to build communities there. I personally specialize in sustainable off-grid infrastructure and shared ownership models.
I co-founded a new resarch and development institute -- called The High Desert Institute -- focused on education around community resilience and sustainable development, especially in the high deserts.
I also have several other projects launching soon.
The High Desert Institute
Together with a group of experienced community-builders, I am fundraising for a new research institute as a foundation for the survival of humanity where we will conduct research, development, and distribution of free open-source solutions to basic human needs like housing and off-grid infrastructure.
HighDesertInstitute.orgBurners Without Borders SF
I cofounded the first ever SF Bay Area chapter of Burners Without Borders! Ironically though the international network is headquartered here, they have not yet had an active chapter here.
The era of covid has been a struggle. Initially we launched three projects and held public meetings to get them started, but because of the many overlapping disasters, we have been forced to refactor.
Radical Racoons
I have participated in the construction of six off-grid intentional communities. One of the key insights that came out of filming the recent television show about how to build off-grid intentional communities is the fact that the art and skill of creating these communities is essentially completely non-overlapping with the art and skill of living at one once it's built. This led to a group discussion at the new land about creating a clearer division between the two types of projects and programs; building communities versus living at them.
Radical Racoons was born! We have all created a lot of content about how to do all the things we do, but searching through social media posts and videos to find what you are looking for is a frustrating and often impossible process. We decided to create an index of all the high-level topics organized for consumption by people trying to do what we do, or for future reference for new people who join us in doing what we do. This will allow us to disseminate the critical lesssons we are learning to a wider audience and give these skills to others who would follow in our footsteps.
As always, everything we do it free, but please feel free to support us using our individual support links!
RadicalRacoons.orgMeme Library
For years I have saved all the best memes I've seen and categorized them by topic. Recently I decided to make this archive publicly available. Check it out, I'm sure you will find something you enjoy.
Check Out MemesKayaks Are Queer
During the Coronavirus pandemic, I found that a lot of people are suffering from the lethal threat of isolation. I have been kayaking for over twenty years, and generally go about once a week. I recently bought a new kayak and so I have an extra. This led me to invite others to kayak with me since kayaking is naturally a socially distant activity.
When I posted pictures and video, many people asked to be invited. This inspired me to create a facebook group whith regular weekly events for people to attend.
Past Projects
GRID Alternatives Summer Internship
Working at ClipperCreek, I learned about GRID Alternatives. GRID is a nonprofit providing solar power, electric vehicles, and charging infrastructure to people in marginalized groups. I was able to get an internship with GRID where I learned all about the state of the home solar power industry.
Critically, I also learned about all the funding sources GRID uses to be able to provide all their infrastructure projects at little to no cost for people who need them.
ClipperCreek Summer Job
I took a summer job at ClipperCreek between semesters. They design, build, and sell chargers for electric vehicles. They do all of this in one main building in California. This was an amazing opportunity to learn all about electric vehicle infrastructure, the state of the industry, and its place in the broader sociopolitical landscape.
Working at ClipperCreek is also how I learned about GRID Alternatives, which is a nonprofit providing solar power, electric vehicles, and charging infrastructure to people in marginalized groups.
Sociology Internship
I had asked several professors about which populations are the most impacted at Sierra College or which groups have the lowest success metrics compared to the average. I was surprised to learn that no one knew the answer so I decided to create a list of all populations which could be filtered and sorted by success.
Check It OutChemistry Honors Project: Cooling Your Tent In The Sun
I studied the effect of various techniques and materials on prolonging that magical sleeping time in the morning before the temperature inside the tent gets too high to keep sleeping. I also compared expensive Shiftpods to cheap alternatives.
Check It OutAstronomy Honors Project Proposal: Radio Interferometry and Gravity Waves
I wrote an honors project proposal in Spring of 2020 for a project that would use radio interferometry to listen to things like pulsars and quasars in order to triangulate their positions relative to the antenna array. This would basically work like a super high-precision GPS that would work anywhere in the universe without relying on GPS satellites.
I also proposed to use the data to detect the propagation of gravity waves across the line of sight from the stars the array was listening to. This might be a much better way of detecting gravity waves than our current detector technology since it relies on observing a known stable transmission as it propagates across the interstellar medium.
The project was shot down by the department because it was too complicated but NASA has since duplicated part of the work I proposed. They completed a pulsar-based GPS system, but have not yet published any research on using it to detect gravity waves.
I later wrote at length about my proposal and the future potential of radio interferometry. It's a topic I'm still very interested in and actively researching when I have time.
There has been a lot of recent interest in phased antenna arrays since Elon Musk announced his Starlink internet service would use them in the residential reciever arrays.
Far-Right Tracker
At least three white-nationalist neo-Nazi groups were active at Sierra College in 2019. They posted propaganda and recruitment flyers around campus on at least a dozen occasions. I worked on putting together a coalition between many student groups and outside groups to track and document this activity. I also built a blog for the strategic partnership to use as a central place to document and chronicle all the activity.
Check It OutOnebagging Europe
I onebagged a whirlwind tour of Europe!
Check out my evolving onebag gear list for international travel.
**Do I really need anything else?**
Indoor Air Quality
I conducted an experiment to measure the effectiveness of simple diy methods for improving indoor air quality. This new project builds on earlier work done to measure the effectiveness of expensive Shiftpod tents versus cheap alternatives.
As someone with severe asthma during a respiratory pandemic which overlaps with wildfire season, this is a particularly salient issue for me personally. I did some personal experiments with filtration methods last year which I built on with this new work. Check out my results!
