Joel’s long-rumored book, A Solar Electric System On the Cheap, On the Fly, and Off the Grid, is now available. It can be yours in .pdf for a mere $4.99. Besides describing in good and useful detail how to build an ad hoc solar power system (Joel created his for just $350), it describes how not to do it (e.g. don’t do it like Joel did with the first system he scrounged together). It also shows larger, more professional systems created by five of his desert-rat neighbors. As you may know, Joel and I were desert neighbors for a while.…
8 CommentsMonth: May 2013
I haven’t been at the computer much today. Have actually had Things To Do and a Life To Live. But several times in my very brief newsly perusals, I’ve encountered the oh-so-shocked question: “Did Holder Lie Under Oath?” The question always leads to this or something like it — Our Esteemed Attorney General denying all knowledge of targeting any reporter under the handy-dandy (to tyrants) 1917 Espionage Act just days before getting caught doing exactly that. He personally signed the warrant to go after Fox Newsy James Rosen as a “co-conspirator” in the supposed espionage. It’s not the targeting of…
10 CommentsOkay, a little lightening up seems in order. Dogs in pantyhose. Petheadz portraits by Zachary Rose. And in honor of graduation season: Six college degrees for dogs. Eight signs your cat is actually a dog: Source for those who don’t see the embed. And what if your roommates were like cats or dogs? Source.
10 CommentsVia Borepatch, here’s the happiest story you’ll read on Memorial Day. Or all week.
Leave a CommentI dislike government-declared holidays. I hate holidays designed to evoke uncritical emotional reactions. Above all, I hate holidays that demand that we all adopt some government-supremacist worldview — or keep our mouths shut when we disagree. We now have two holidays in the year that serve the same purpose: to impose upon us the lie that all soldiers who fight in any war are always “fighting for our freedom.” (As long as they work for the U.S. government, of course. Presumably soldiers who work for opposing governments are all poltroons at best and baby-raping war criminals at worst.) Today, we’re…
53 CommentsFor crass commercial purposes To encourage you to support this blog Because people have been buying some interestingly useful stuff via my Amazon links,* I thought I’d start a semi-regular feature on what’s hot at Amazon for preppers, self-sufficient types, rebels, Freedom Outlaws, libertarians, free-market anarchists, and general hellraisers. I’ll kick it off by featuring a theme: preparedness items. If you just happen to see something you can’t live without, you’ll be contributing to this blog (and me!) by using these links. (Even if you don’t buy a featured item, everything you do buy at Amazon after entering via one…
12 CommentsJeff Berwick’s take on the strange public “disappearing” of Adam Kokesh. You’d think that, with every public thing now being videotaped, the thug class would, at minimum, become more careful and cagey. Instead, they’re ramping up their violence and their sheer, bloody brazenness. Good. This means they’re scared. (And scared of activists who are, after all, people who are still hopeful enough to ask Massah to relent just a tiny bit.) Bad. For the reasons expressed in Berwick’s headline. Anybody hereabouts in contact with Kokesh?
15 CommentsWell, isn’t that cozy? A top Obama donor is the founder and CEO of a company that will soon control about one half of all medical data on Americans. She’s 85. Just graduated from college. And already has herself a job. Ray Manzarek is dead. Jim Morrison might have gotten most of the press, but Manzarek was the real genius behind the haunting sound of The Doors. “Some of my best friends are germs.” Long, but fascinating. Maybe a leisurely weekend read.(H/T S) You see the wonderful thing about equality for women? We get equal opportunities for political corruption —…
8 CommentsI know this is breaking news, which means it’s subject to every error and wild speculation. But this is weird. The FBI is “questioning” a man (and apparently has him in their custody and control, according to another person they were also “questioning”). They’ve gone to the man’s apartment in the middle of the night (or “Wednesday morning after midnight” in the Orwellian way these things are put now). And after some substantial long time of having control over him for this “questioning,” they kill him? They shoot him to death? Yeah. Weird. Name was Ibragim Todashev. Friend of Boston…
16 CommentsA friend and I got to talking about the deeper implications of Cody Wilson’s “alarming” achievement (which, naturally, has already been trumped and will soon be trump-trump-trump-trumped ad infinitum). My friend said that the real achievements will be in 3D-printed firing mechanisms and make-at-home-and-throw-away magazines. (Perhaps he’ll come here and give a more thorough explanation than I just did.) As far as firearms go, that may be correct. But he got me thinking about the broader, long-term implications of 3D printing. Cory Doctorow speculated about that clear back in 2006 in his short story “Printcrime.” (Amazing foresight there, CD.) So…
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