- Do Not Resist: New documentary rips apart police militarization.
- And a “raid” just uncovered a dozen or so pot plants … in an ancient Chinese tomb
- What happens when a space observatory loses its government funding and “goes rogue” (that is, freelance) instead.
- Bruce Schneier counts the leakers who are still out there in the U.S. intelligence community.
- A mini-guide to water filtration and purification.
- The Romans really made a big effort to subdue the rowdy Scots. Far as I can tell, nobody’s subdued the Scots yet for all the centuries of trying.
- Twenty-two foods that used to be way different. Some in good ways, some in not-so-good ways. Some involving Twinkies.
- With Twitter increasingly censoring “right wing” speech while allowing even more offensive “left wing” speech, prominent conservatives and freedomistas are beginning to bail. This is one place they’re headed. Damnably opaque site, though — possibly because it doesn’t even exist yet despite being announced two months ago. Just beta so far. Worth watching. I’ve signed up and am on a waiting list.
- Yesterday this quote came into my mailbox: “If you want to be free, there is but one way;
it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.” A freedomista truism, of course. The attribution was most interesting: “Carl Schurz (1829-1906) German revolutionary, author, newspaper editor, journalist, Union Army general during US Civil War, first German-born U.S. Senator (MO-R).” Some resume! Some life. And another of history’s fascinating forgotten “somebodies.”
“Far as I can tell, nobody’s subdued the Scots yet for all the centuries of trying. “
Their Brexit votes suggests otherwise.
I’ve been seeing folks who’ve gained beta access talk about gab.ai. It appears to be real, hosted on Microsoft’s Azure (www.azure.com).
There is a Terms of Service page (https://gab.ai/about/tos), which links to Privacy Policy and Community Guidelines pages. The email address at the bottom of those pages bounced when I sent a bug report, but I managed to report it via Twitter, and they fixed it very quickly.
There’s a support account on Twitter (https://twitter.com/getongab) and the CEO, Andrew Torba, also has an active Twitter account (https://twitter.com/torbahax). His Gab address, for those who’ve gotten approved for the beta, is gab.ai/a.
Nah, HWFIW… All of the independent, hard headed Scots (like my grandparents) immigrated to “America” and other places long, LONG before Brexit. Those left in the UK tend to be squishy about the “Braveheart” stuff.
But I wouldn’t really want to see anyone, face to face, push one of them into a tight corner… sometimes blood tells, no matter how thin it gets. 🙂
There’s a 5.5 minute introductory Gab video, posted on Monday, September 3, at https://youtu.be/VX7pZ0_l5Hw .
Thanks for all the info, Bill. Looks good (and unsurprisingly familiar-with-a-difference). I like what I’ve seen so far and sure wish ’em well. Twitter used to be the only social media platform I actually thought was fun, useful, and not horribly intrusive. But man, they have completely self-destructed — with all their blatant PC censorship being the last straw.
National Guard, State Police descend on 81-year-old’s property to seize single pot plant http://www.gazettenet.com/MarijuanaRaid-HG-100116-5074664
About the Scots and Brexit, it ain’t over till it’s over.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/as-the-rest-of-britain-feels-the-effects-of-brexit-scotland-prepares-for-a-new-life/article30730649/
Oh, and there may be issues with the folks in Northern Ireland too.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/04/ireland-to-seek-special-status-to-keep-open-border-with-uk-amid-hard-brexit-fears
I looked at the Gab site, very nice and a lot more characters then Twitter too. Me like…Thank you for posting that info.
How to filter and purify water? Well, I have sucked it through my shirt or a silk bandana- that seems to filter out the biggest chunks of gunk and algae and mosquito larvae. And a few times I have just sucked it through my teeth to get the really big stuff out. That’s “purified”, right?
The time that really bothered me was when I needed water and the only water I could find in any quantity was in little rock kettles- dozens of them with a few cups of water in each. It looked good as long as you ignored the pika pellets in the bottom of each one. Turns out that didn’t spoil the taste, though.
Probably you shouldn’t follow my poor example.
The Green Bank Observatory… Nice place. Back when I was studying electronics in college one of our instructors was friends with one of the staff that worked there. He arranged a trip to visit and about 15 of us went. Apparently they are set up with dorms, a cafeteria and we would stay there a few days. of course our biggest interest was the in house electronics fabrication area, but one night they set us up and showed us how to run a small radio antenna and we spent the night tracking and recording data from a quasar or a pulsar (cant recall).
We had a tour and had the chance to see and chat with some folks from SETI in one of the huge antennas they had leased.
Getting around the huge place meant you drove a diesel rig stripped of any electronics that would interfere with the antennas, or their were bikes parked everywhere and you used one of those.
We had a almost unfettered run of the place except for one large antenna owned by the US Navy. No one knew or would say what it was for, but we would notice it moving to different places every so often, doing whatever the navy needs to do with a radio telescope I guess.
Awesome Experience.
Kent, I was bar-talking one night with David Alloway about desert survival. He had just returned from a cross-desert trek in Australia.
http://www.survival.com/alloway.htm
I offered the comment, “Diarrhea beats dying.” Diarrhea is curable; dying ain’t. His response was, “Can I use that?” 😀
Sometimes you’re stuck with whatever water is available.
Probably should include Paregoric in a bug-out bag.
Diarrhea kills you by dehydrating you, no? I suppose the question would be whether you can maintain sufficient fluid intake with your non-purified water to last until you can get good water.
I’ve actually used this method on a desert hunt when we ran out of the water we’d hauled before we could get back to base camp.
All you need to carry is some sort of funnel (collapsible one is great) and some coffee filters. (Use the cone type for both). Oh, and some sort of bottle to catch the filtered water. You can pour from that into your individual canteens.
Put the coffee filter into the cone funnel. Add alternating layers (roughly 1 inch thick) of clean sand and crushed charcoal from a wood fire. Insert the funnel into the collection container and pour the contaminated water over the sand/charcoal very slowly. Best to have the bottle and filter supported, since it might take a bit for the water to trickle through. Once you have the clean water, it is best to boil it before drinking it. The filter won’t remove the germs. Use clean new filter, sand and charcoal for subsequent batches.
You’ll need to plan ahead for this, and other methods might be necessary in an emergency, but the filtered water above is truly best if you’re going to make coffee in your camp. 🙂
@ProGunFred https://gab.ai/home
So Far:
It’s user funded and they post the donation totals periodically. They’re adding features as they get the funds. It’s going ok so far. Don’t get your hopes up too high. It is mostly childish gibberish. I found a couple of thinkers but even most of their content is slinging one liners at people they don’t know. It is, after all, under 30’s merikan public skool edumicated folks but OTOH even I can sound profound over there.
Trying it out.
Fred — I also signed up for Gab.ai yesterday and had a look around. The debates were about half an hour underway and literally ALL I found was a lot of pro-Trump rah-rah with no real content. When I searched for people to follow, the only familiar ones I found were Milo Yiannopoulis (sp), who’s an interesting provocateur but no more than that and Prison Planet aka Alex Jones.
I’m sure that’ll change as the site grows, but although I liked the layout of the site itself, I was puzzled to find absolutely nothing but alt-right content. I kept thinking I had to be missing something and that a free-speech platform would attract more than that. I’ll keep checking.
Gab was running a special pre-debate application approval yesterday. My application from Thursday has not yet been approved. I almost applied again, with a different email address, but decided to instead find out how long it took to get through the standard queue.
I haven’t gotten a wonderful vibe from following the Gab CEO, Andrew Torba. on Twitter (@torbahax or gab.ai/a). I stopped following him because he was way too noisy, mostly slinging one-liners, as Fred complains about the rest of the Gab community. Still following @getongab, their support account, but even that is almost too noisy. I use Twitter mostly for functional programming info, but politics tends to creep in, mostly because of the huge socialist population in almost every part of the world.
I’m going to start a thread, with a review of my experience so, over in the cabal.
Sooooo, what are ya’lls addresses over there???
@ProGunFred https://gab.ai/home
I’m @ClaireWolfe. But I don’t know how active I’m going to be over there. As long as the climate is mostly Vox Day and Milo Y, the place won’t hold a lot of interest. If other free-speech advocates with broader views move in, it’ll be a happy place.
yep, got that, figured as much. My review is up at myob.
Hey, you gonna follow me on Gab? I just thanked you for being my very first. But my one-and-only follower is actually still somebody else. 🙁