Posted on 09/05/2026 5:53:07 PM PDT by Red Badger
Havana — How to conserve cellphone battery when recharging options are scarce; how to preserve food when the fridge isn’t working; how to cope with the heat when air-conditioners aren’t an option; how to generate power when the whole country has almost none left. These are the sort of tutorials that have made the Instagram feed of influencer Dayán Marrero indispensable to many Cubans as they try to adapt to the rolling electricity blackouts and fuel shortages that are increasingly part of everyday life on this Caribbean island.
As the US-imposed oil blockade that is worsening the situation bites ever deeper, Marrero and his compatriots are having to get creative. Farmers pasteurize milk over charcoal fires; commuters ride solar-powered Chinese tricycles; tour guides grind coffee by hand for the vanishingly few visitors that remain.
Like his fellow countrymen, Marrero — a third-year computer science student at the Agrarian University of Havana — has become adept at adapting.
Previously, the idea that he might become a content creator had “never even crossed my mind,” yet here he is, in the living room of his home in Caraballo, a former sugar town, promoting the latest must-have items, such as a rechargeable fan that also provides light while he records his videos. And he is successful; one of his most popular posts, a tutorial on how to build an antenna to pick up the mobile network’s elusive internet signal, is approaching 800,000 views.
Still, if he is to reach his next goal as an influencer — establishing a presence on TikTok — he will have to get even more creative, as use of the app is restricted by US sanctions.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Communism would have worked over the past 125 years if it wasn’t for Trump!!!
“Trump evil. Dictatorship and human suffering good.”
[/sarcasm]
“Who runs Bartertown?”
They are a tropical island, they have virtually unlimited biomass. Sugar cane alone in the rural areas can run all the town’s and villages around the fields off the waste canes. Sugar cane is one of the fastest growing grasses on this planet. You can of course gasify trash, paper wastes, sewage sludge if it grows or was grown at some point it can be turned into gas for a generator.
Boom problem solved.
http://wiki.gekgasifier.com/w/page/24508452/Run%20an%20Engine%20with%20the%20GEK
Can’t they just take it from the rich? From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
I was about to say, “A really big potato clock?”
Tax the rich.
Feed the poor.
Until there are no,
Rich no more.................
With Trump’s help, Cuba has achieved net zero carbon production! The environmental leftists should be ecstatic.
I remember turning a hand-cranked generator for a radio transmitter. It gets really hard to turn when it goes TX active.
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