ctdonath

I grew up on a "hobby homestead", moved there when (as babe-in-arms) my folks faced a massive snowstorm that threatened to cut off natural gas supply, clarifying how utterly dependent they were on the grid/system. Big garden, orchard, wood heat, backup supplies, etc. It was all well-balanced with modern living.

When the "Y2K Bug" was looming, I explained the worst-case possible scenario to Dad (an electrical engineer) regarding worldwide computer system collapse. He listened attentively, understood, and responded "then I'll throw another log on the fire and go back to my book." That's how prepared they were.

The key is embracing homesteading, to whatever degree you choose to take it, as a lifestyle. It's not a hobby. It's not a job. It's what you do, blended with and influencing everything else, 24/7.

I now live in the suburbs, with a bit of forest. Having grown up homesteading, it still influences my thinking, and I'd rather return thereto. Though enjoying modern conveniences & luxuries, everything has an undercurrent of considering "one step simpler". I lament my kids not having the same upbringing, and do try to expose them at least a bit to living off the land.

Analogy: coffee. I have about 20 coffee makers, and several coffee shops nearby. Yes it's nice to pick up a cup (black, dark) for ~$2.50 ready to go. Yes it's nice having pod machines, ~$0.50 for "insert pod, press Go". Yes, I've tried every convenience for coffee. What I normally do, with no angst/struggle regarding the work and convenience of alternatives, is roast the beans myself in small batches, hand-grind, and do a hybrid press/pour-over - nearly every time, for years, despite the time and effort, it's just what I do.

Do realize that your friends are beholden to a system which can collapse, fast and completely. It probably won't ... but the probability isn't zero, isn't trivial, and historically we're rather due for another one. You don't want to spend your life preparing for a worst that doesn't happen, but you certainly can live such that societal problems don't tear you down. You can be ready and financially/socially robust; you just have to decide where your sweet spot in life is, regardless of what 'more' others have (and pay for by 'less' elsewhere).

The hard way isn't for everyone. You either internalize it as simply what you do, regardless of what others enjoy, or you move on to what it is you do, realistically, want to do. You do you, and be realistic about circumstances.

Au contraire, it’s even cheaper than portrayed. Even though a “basic tunic” today can be had for less than an hour of minimum wage work under very comfortable conditions, the price additionally covers advertising, intercontinental shipping, extensive regulatory compliance, extensive insurance, great HVAC, etc.

Yes you can find “tragedy of the commons” and other concerns for modern production. Realize the tradeoffs, that ancient circumstances denied many benefits enjoyed today, that were we to subject workers today to those circumstances you’d be far more outraged.

And that path currently goes thru an autist welding up rockets in tents on a beach.

Amazing how a few meters of mirror can make out objects billions of light-years distant. Yes it's big - insofar as human-built telescopes have been - yet is so relatively minuscule per what it observes. Having gone from first flight to JWST in such a short time is staggering (Wright Bros 120 years ago - I've been alive nearly half that time); how soon will we achieve orders-of-magnitude bigger telescopes? say, multiple 100x-wider JWSTs operating from multiple LaGrange points? Think big!

Kids vary.

Daughter slept they the night from day one.

Son was up hungry every night at 2am.

Given that, power point of this thread, people pretty much went to bed at sunset, at European latitude that would mean a long night much of the year with kids wanting food and adults being sufficiently rested late at night. Once satiated amid a quiet daze of food/sex/meditation, they’d likely doze back off until daybreak. Two sleeps seems quite sensible without electricity’s prolonged days.

“Walkable” doesn’t give much room for options. 30 minutes walking covers far less area than 30 minutes driving.

That’s strong incentive to give up living downtown, parking costing 1/4 of far more spacious accommodations (with lots of parking).

Is the public transit free? If not, then it’s friction hindering being there, adding baseline cost just to be there. Having added cost, I’m expecting commensurate payoff for being there. I’m apt to just peruse/enjoy if no cost to be there (and likely spend on a whim), but if it’s $10 just to be there then I’m expecting to spend >$100 on something - and I’m likely to balk at that, and not go at all.

Think: why am I parking there? Who benefits? Will added friction hinder? How does charging enhance that benefit, making me want to pay vs avoid?

We’re in the age of COVID, discovering the benefits of not going places, and creating new options not to. Charging for parking makes me reconsider going there at all, raising the cost and hassle - more likely to go elsewhere, stay home and do remotely, or forego the activity. Low-cost or low-planning activities don’t happen if parking sets minimum cost to >$0; random purchases will be passed up. If I do pay for parking, I expect convenience, security, and ease for the act. I’m less likely to visit a local city precisely because parking will at least double my cost getting there (gas); I’d rather spend that $ going somewhere farther, more interesting and free parking.

Want more business? Figure out how to make it cheaper for me to be there: reduce friction, make parking free and easy.

But you don’t know which, and others may fail first due to various adverse events (say, random micrometeoroid strike). If any link fails, the whole chain fails.

Contrast a second chain, or double linked chain, so if any link fails the load is not lost.

Contrast a chain with double links, where if any link fails another is entirely capable of holding the load.

> unreliable

Few appreciate the “brick wall” facing variability in green energy: if the battery depletes, power flow stops.

Batteries cost the same to cover whatever multiple of standard deviation prepared for. “Hundred year calm/clouds” need be prepared for - there’s no discount on installing that battery backup, very costly for a rare event (still often enough to need coverage).

When the batteries deplete, system halts until nature decides to provide enough again. FF reserves can tide over, nuclear will glow on; green varies by hour where outages can last weeks.

I run my office on solar every summer. Battery depletion is a very real, common, and costly issue.

Note that many of the predictions which didn’t happen proved doable but were a bad idea.

“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.” - Nicola Tesla, 1926

“Decompose” being the tail end of the deterioration process, with the usable period being far shorter.

Related resource: https://twitter.com/1000yearhouse

“Don’t do X” for young versions have to process the “X” part before the “don’t”, and processing includes going thru that motion - then getting to “don’t”, realizing the mistake, laughing about it, and then attempting to process the phrase again with the same result.

"Strange how much human progress and achievement comes from contemplation of the irrelevant." - Scott Kim

Grylls fakes it.

Stroud doesn’t.

A demeaning term applied to a subcategory of whites.

Yes. In an area with lots of leaves, not unreasonable to think motion or parallax unexpectedly included a leaf - vs some wild convergence of leading edge technological bugs perfectly rendering content in a system which shouldn’t.

Sometimes a leaf is just a leaf.

Certainly not best, but among most influential to wit enduring.

Seek to find a thread thru the full stack, sand to simulation. Get at least a cursory grasp of silicon-based transistors, binary representations of data, basic binary logic, 4-operation CPUs, simple memory & storage, a toy operating system, C programming, object-oriented C++/Swift/Java programming, memory-mapped I/O & graphics, TCP/IP networking, HTTPS protocols, then pick a major example vertical (PC, Mac, iPhone, Android) and work up to a publishable (if simple) product.

Having seen computing grow from before the IBM PC, my primary lament is new developers rarely have a view of how everything works (however simply) from the very bottom to top, from basic semiconductor electronics to getting something onto an App Store. Most pick a layer and live there, largely unaware of what's happening below or above - and so don't know why things work, and more importantly why they don't.

Please elaborate on including LISP. Having been programming since the 1980s, its influence seems more a persistent curiosity than fundamental concept. C/C++ may be the more relevant unchanging language, core concepts applicable to most modern languages (which just re-implement them with more depth of expression, and less room for system-crashing errors).

The concern isn't the normal emergency items normally in the vehicle (airborne or other), it's the other stuff that normally wouldn't be there if there wasn't a decided intent to use it during the trip.

I'm very much into survival/preparedness, and am quite aware of gear that stereotypically one would, or would want to, take into a genuine survival situation but in no way would actually haul around on a regular basis for the unlikely chance of actually needing it - stuff that I would be quite suspicious of should the "victim" actually have handy.

For this case, many other comments here are startled about the presence of a full sport parachute, already being worn, during an ostensibly mundane "just traveling" trip ... along with wrist-mounted GoPro, selfie stick, etc.

Both make it abundantly clear that their "survival" situation is artificially contrived (i.e.: traveled into the target area with acknowledge purpose of concocting a "survival" scenario, have safety teams either on-site or nearby, have a decent idea how to get out if not an actually arranged plan).

Seems this guy is claiming it was a genuine malfunction/crash/survival case, while giving numerous "tells" that it wasn't. Deliberately disabling and abandoning a functioning aircraft in-flight over potentially habitated/occupied territory (i.e.: it's gonna crash somewhere, and perpetrator doesn't know it won't kill someone) is actionably reckless endangerment.

When the target of your objectively reasonable directive is self-admittedly of the mindset "I could (A) get up and do it, or (B) kill myself", you may want to reconsider the wording.

The intent of "make the world a bit better every day" is colloquially understood to refer to things like picking up more than just your garbage, making choices that add less tragedy to the commons, and generally being nice to people even if they're not nice to you.

Deliberately taking "make the world a bit better every day" off to some demeaning tangent tearing down others by wild scenarios designed to discourage does not "make the world a bit better every day".

"...2000 years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change..." Yeah, Douglas Adams got that bit right.

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