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Month: July 2018

What we’ve lost

Last spring I sat down to create a third edition of The Freedom Outlaws Handbook. I knew major updates would be needed, particularly in the areas of freedom technology and privacy. Eleven years had passed. Tech changes. Ventures fail. Laws tighten. Rarely, laws loosen (but it does happen). I was prepared for that. I wasn’t prepared for devastation. But devastation confronted me as I attempted to revise item after item. Mere rewrites were futile. Mere replacements didn’t exist. Site after site, option after option had disappeared. Sometimes they’d merely disappeared, broke, obsolete, unable to deliver on their promises, or neglected…

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Monday links

  • Pennsylvania is SO twentieth century. They got Defense Distributed to block downloads of 3D-printable gun plans. Lots of verbal hand-wringing. No acknowledgement that VPNs and proxies make physical location irrelevant.
  • Pity that neither the PA gov nor the Catholic church was so interested in protecting residents against 300 pedophile priests included in an upcoming “nuclear bomb” grand jury report.
  • We don’t need the future Silicon Valley is selling. 8 Comments
  • Construction matters

    Whew. Another weekend away from the computer, working outdoors. After feeling like a vampire bat in a cave of gloom for nine months, it sure feels good to work in the sunshine. Or even in the slightly-less-wet gloom, which is what we had yesterday. The Wandering Monk finished his part of the east wall project on Friday, then returned yesterday at no charge to remove the scaffolding and help with a few extra bits. Nice guy, that Monk. Since then I’ve been painting trim. There is a lot of trim on this house. It’s very good at covering old idiocies…

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    Maybe that side has some potential after all

    Maybe the ugly and unregarded east side of Ye Olde Wreck has some potential after all. The Wandering Monk isn’t really headless. He’s just the one bad angle in an otherwise happy shot. I told him I had no great expectations for the east wall renovation — that I merely wanted to get it done, check it off the list, and move on to more gratifying work. He told me it would be “beeeautiful” when we finished. Hyperbole, I thought. But you know, it’s getting there. Skirting, belly band — even seemingly small things like replacing broken shingles or covering…

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    Thursday links

  • I’m mystified by this week’s hullabaloo about Trump threatening to take over the Federal Reserve. He might make it “political”? But as Rothbard knew, few things are already as inherently political as the infamous Fed.
  • Murder-for-hire charges against Ross Ulbricht have been dropped. Bet most people who know he’s in prison think that’s what he was already convicted of.
  • That terrible question we always get: What would happen if the government didn’t handle X, Y, or Z? 5 Comments
  • The unregarded east side

    I finished up the north gable end yesterday and we swung around to begin work on the east wall. That’s The Wandering Monk above, with his magical Honda pressure washer. They cleaned decades of grime off the siding and incidentally revealed bad seals at the top of two windows. Really bad seals, in one case. One window merely dribbled harmlessly under the force of the washer. The other admitted what seemed half the aquatic blast into my living room, drenching a desk, paperwork, and electronics. That was … interesting. OTOH, this is a good moment to learn about things that…

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