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Category: Off-Grid

Trials, travails, joys, and learning experiences of living with homemade utilities

Weekend links

  • Poo widdle Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Desperately signaling his “progressive” virtues while running off to “get treatment” for being a jerk to women (and everybody else).
  • Personally, though, I hope his movie company doesn’t collapse. ‘Cause while that man may be an anti-gun suck and the biggest a*hole ever, he truly does have a magic touch when it comes to choosing films.
  • Where the NRA caves, once again Ohioans for Concealed Carry stands on principle (and on genuine common sense). 5 Comments
  • Tuesday links

  • Uber and Lyft are not just disrupting longstanding “taxi control” in New York City. They’re disrupting lenders who have profited from the insane medallion fees.
  • Ha ha ha. You know all those well-heeled people who are always spouting about how everybody should pay higher taxes? Well guess what happens when they’re invited to volunteer more of their own dough?
  • This planet’s a crazy place. When it’s time to leave, is it feasible to terraform Mars? 14 Comments
  • Weekend links

  • Two shoots, two hits, two misses. Scott Greenfield explains.
  • Beneath the fold; how it’s still wrong to deny rights to one group just because rights were at some time denied to another.
  • A one-sentence bill to slash through the health-care mess. Is it pure freedomista? Nope. Not by a longshot. (And this isn’t an endorsement, so don’t rail at me for being a statist, okay?) But it’s out-of-the-box thinking, which Our Health-Insurance Overlords badly need to do. (H/T MJ) 8 Comments
  • Midweek links

  • In another triumph of automotive “security,” BMW’s new rental-car service manages to halt three Seattle ferries on a single evening.
  • Oh, such a relief. Apparently the cultural-appropriation pecksniffs are trying to find ways (however illogical) to “allow” writers to go on creating characters who aren’t exactly like their authors.
  • Looks as if Cleveland was looking for a reason to can the cop who murdered 12-year-old Tamir Rice. They found one, easily enough. Hardly a substitute for the prison sentence the creep deserved, though. 10 Comments
  • Johatsu — “evaporated people”

    Killing time while waiting for The Wandering Monk to arrive and begin the foundation project, I found something absolutely fascinating. Johatsu. A Japanese word meaning “evaporated people.” Not dead. Not suspiciously missing. But people who’ve chosen to disappear out of their existing identities into new, perhaps off-grid ones. A French couple have been tracking this phenomenon for years and now have published a book: The Vanished: The “evaporated people” of Japan in Stories and Photographs. PRI has done a story on the johatsu and the French pair who became obsessed with them, as has Business Insider. Oddly, it turns out…

    10 Comments

    Flabbergasted

    A few years ago, two of the many kind readers of this blog sent a substantial donation specifically for buying a generator. The money they sent was enough to purchase an inexpensive generator — or make a good start on saving for the compact Honda or Yamaha they knew was on my wish list. They gave me that option. My choice. I decided to stash the donation and keep on saving for the Dream Generator. While it made me nervous not to have backup power, I figured that — not being particularly a Ms Fixit — I needed the reliability,…

    24 Comments

    Weekend links

  • Uber is now tracking customers after they’ve closed its app. But not to worry; it’s for your own good. (Close app, turn off phone, remove battery — if your battery is still a removable one.) (H/T MJR)
  • Can’t afford to rent your very own malicious botnet (per last links)? Well, there’s always this $50 USB killer. It’s not perfect; but for mere couch-cushion change, what do you expect?
  • It’s truly a human tragedy that this type of humane research on psychoactive drugs has been curtailed for so many decades. Thanks, War on Drugs. 8 Comments