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Comment by fitsumbelay | Hacker News Reader

This is a great, very fascinating YouTube channel.

Dirksen travels North America and Europe with her husband and 3 or 4 kids documenting home designs of all types. Lots of tiny homes in Los Angeles and California ( I believe one or two in Toronto ) as well as Western Europe. Her husband is from Catalunya so they've a bunch of clips from there. There's also one of a man who build a home sort of next to or inside a cave.

The coolest clips by far are ones of ancient abandoned villages and compounds (I think one castle-like structure) in Spain, Portugal and Italy that individuals took over and converted into homes.

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I used to watch her videos back when she had very little followers. I'm glad to see she picked up so many subscribers, it's well deserved. I enjoy the way she interacts with the people because it seems more natural than the other heavily edited/pro formats.

Agreed on all points. Her family is a big part of that casual interaction since they're young enough to be super active and curious. They seem to get on especially well with older subjects

I only just discovered her during the pandemic and since then a lot of copy cat projects've popped up and moved on to bigger streaming platforms. I'd buy a DVD/Blu-Ray collection of her YouTubes

I really like her content, especially the earthship videos. The 'home engineering' that goes into these buildings is awesome. Though I'll probably never get to build one, would happily play a game based on this (like some sort of physics based survival game? Is this a thing?)

The earthship design includes a lot of ideas from permaculture design. Dirksen has also toured Brad Landcaster's site, in which the permaculture design is very obvious, and it is not an earthship. Those design principles and method applies to any region, biome, or climate, so even if you may never get to build an earthship, you can still use permaculture design wherever you land.

I love Dirksen, and a very similar channel on YT is called Exploring Alternatives

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8EQAfueDGNeqb1ALm0LjHA

I've seen a few videos from that channel.

downtoearth is another good one.

Kirsten has a way of bringing out the enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and happy in people she interviews.

A rare gift that she combines with superb editing.

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