Wednesday, April 5, 2017

village bug out


VILLAGE BUG OUT

Villages are the new future groupings.  Well, the new, old, standard.  Not suburban layouts.  Not lone houses atop a mountain ( although they did have villages atop a mountain or two ).  Nobody wants to go back to living in a village, probably because of class envy and small penis/large wallet syndrome.  How are our Betters to show the little people how superior they are if they don’t dominate with their superior dwelling?  It is all rather wearying to me, trying to restrain from firebombing rich humpers houses ( I’m kidding.  The fleeting joy of stressing the rich is in no way comparable to the lifelong stress of me getting anally probed in prison ).  Actually, it is wearying just trying to figure the rich out.  Why must they act out?  Show their inferiority complex?  Act like spoiled rich kids ( or, the class kiss ass who started poor but will screw anybody to avoid staying that way ) who went on to become officers in the military, needing an institution to fill in the voids in their souls?  Why can’t they just be happy with money, rather than using money for their dog and pony show ( hint: money isn’t the important thing, but rather their need to move up in monkey tribe rank )?

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Here is the thing, at least to start.  Class showmanship in the form of impractical housing can get you killed if you are not careful.  And I don’t think that most people with money are all that careful.  First, come a serious economic collapse, the real kind caused by energy decline, not the pussy weak ass one we are going through where some slip from middle class to lower and some get Food Stamps and more lose jobs, the rich will go from role models to the worker bees dreaming of not being crapped on one day to the scapegoats the suddenly justified anger of the classes just then realizing their dilemmas blossoms into.  How can you get rich without seriously studying the possible negative consequences of that?  I got a million bucks, I’d be less worried about growing it with investments than learning how to keep it from the greedy paws of others, and their using means fair or foul to thwart me.  Secondly, Wherever you live now won’t be your permanent residence. 

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People have grown up and chained themselves with golden handcuffs to their sad and pathetic stress filled occupations and used their home as the excuse to hide the key from themselves.  Oh, it’s an investment.  Oh, this is where my family lives.  No, Virginia, there is no real estate Santa Claus.  You don’t suddenly wake up one morning to find a pile of equity under your tree.  The folks in California played to that fantasy for a time, and it was seemingly true, but the underlying reality was far different.  A half million dollars for an under insulated poor quality stick built house, in a bad neighborhood, in an area where water must be pumped over a mountain from hundreds of miles away, far from work necessitating a hate filled dangerous road rage demolition derby commute.  That is a starter home, by the way.  Was I off in a foreign land when everyone else’s wages doubled or tripled?  Real estate presently is nothing more than a suckers money pit.  It is the furthest thing from an investment.

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An investment is placing money into a vehicle that earns you money in the future.  Paying slightly less money in the future ( if you pay $300 in interest and $200 in property tax, $200 in principle and $100 in insurance, it is great you are going from $800 a month to $300, but you are still paying, and on a reduced retirement income, and that isn’t even factoring in increased costs for repairs since poor quality starts Day One ) for shelter is not an investment.  You aren’t earning anything.  You are just paying less.  Granted, that is about as good as it gets for any of us anymore, but technically you can’t call it an investment.  Yet, most home owners ACT like it is an investment.  You want to actually invest in real estate, you own a trailer park and get free rent on your space AND you get an income every month.  But, as I said, the investment myth persists because of poor choice justification.  We desperately cling to the myth of Social Security to help with those retirement housing repair costs, and cling to the myth of Forever Fracking Oil to make ourselves believe that we’ll be justified in believing our retirement and housing myths.

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Once you buy into the housing investment myth, you then desperately try to fit THAT in with survivalism.  Which isn’t really possible, is it?  Beyond simple natural disasters or FedGov One World Government Blue Helmet Invasion, any other collapse scenario isn’t compatible with all the above housing/career/retirement myths.  That is one of the fundamental reasons behind the inability to accept Peak Oil.  It would endanger the Justification Myths.  I say, you screw up, you accept it and move on and do something different.  Most folks won’t admit they made a bad decision.  Some of those you can’t easily escape, such as a poor marriage where the children are being held hostage for future ransom payments due every two weeks.  But why are you digging the hole deeper?  Rule One when you find yourself in a rut or a hole.  Stop Friggin Digging!  So what if you spent twenty years on a mortgage in a declining area.  Walk away.  It was a poor spending choice, certainly it was NOT an investment.  Same with a job.  If a fat juicy retirement check isn’t on the end of it, why are you still there ( notwithstanding the Retirement Myth argument )?

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You can’t even discern the vague outlines of the future, let alone anything with clarity, if you are so hung up on your personal myths that their brilliance blinds you to anything else.  We continue tomorrow.

END
 
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19 comments:

  1. Hello Doctor James, Meant to post this the other day, Harbor Freight has dropped its price on the 45 watt solar panel kit with all the fixin's from the $150.00 price they have had for the last 4 years down to $119.00.
    Do you or any of the other 6 people :) who read here have any experience with this product? And would a marine battery be best for charging or perhaps a large SUV auto battery be best?
    At this price (limit 4) I'm planning on buying 3 and hope I can connect them for 135 watts. God willing and the river don't rise.

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    1. I bought the old kind with heavy glass from Harbor Frieght-they still work a decade later ( well, two out of three ). I much prefer the Amazon mono types, $119 for 100 watts. I guess you have to decide what the extras Harbor gives you are worth. My panels consist of a L bracket flattened, some screws on a wood pallet. Extra $1 or so. But if you want it pretty...

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    2. I have one of these Harbor Freight kits attached to the roof of a shed I have at the family camp site. Cheap set-up and I won't be out too much if stolen/vandalized. In a fixed spot on the roof, you mostly get 50% of the full capacity out of the panels except when the sun is just right. It is an easy kit to work with and get some experience. You want a deep cycle battery to go with it. The charge controller that came with the kit works, but is low quality and a bit harder on your battery than a more expensive one. It has lots of plug-ins for DC stuff. I use it to have an LED light in the shed and to charge stuff (phone, batteries for flashlights). It works for that. For somewhere I lived, I'd want better panels and a better charge controller, but it fits with the "better than nothing" philosophy.

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    3. Check the wattage limit on the charge controller. You may not be able to connect three sets (9 15-watt panels) together without blowing a fuse on the charge controller.

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    4. Harbor Freight kit panels are low quality. You can do better buying monocrystaline panels and the best ("best" meaning MPPT and appropriate levels of charge for your needed battery bank, efficiency) charge controller that you can afford. Avoid controllers with fans built-in. Seek large heat sinks and conformally-coated or potted printed circuit boards in the model you choose. Look for 5 year warrantee.

      A good model that will put out 15A to the battery bank at 12v or 24v is Morningstar Sunsaver 15L. This company builds equipment suitable for use in African huts occupied by natives, so it's not overly-complex or fragile. Made by our Chinese friends on Formosa/Taiwan who are not Reds. It's poorly advertised/marketed in the USA, which keeps the price down.

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    5. Adjustable panel-aiming brackets are pretty easy if you have some L-shaped bar stock in steel or aluminum and a drill.

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    6. I wouldn't call Harbor "better than nothing", I'd call then "over stock that hasn't been discounted enough.
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      I thought the total watts were 45? You only need a 7 amp.
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      Morningstar is $300!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Buy the cheaper $10 ones in multiples. Unless you have a HUGE number of panels.
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      I never cared that my panels were fixed. I use more wattage than I need and less juice than I should. For the longest time I wasn't around during the day to adjust.

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    7. I bought some of those 45 Watt sets a few years ago as a BTN until I could get some better hardware. They are amorphous so they handle partial shading better than the mono-crystalline (a plus considering where I was mounting mine).
      Anonymous @ 2:41 p.m. is correct, the charge controller supplied with the kit leaves a lot to be desired. (Mine contained a simple three-terminal regulator with a pass transistor as a constant voltage source, IIRC. Not the best for efficiency or battery life.) I used a Morningstar SunGuard 4.5A controller instead. It's a sealed unit (weather resistant, unlike the HF controller) and inexpensive at around $30. I bought mine on Amazon ( https://www.amazon.com/SunGuard-Charge-Controller-Regulator-Morningstar/dp/B000O3O0W2 ) to support a certain blog writer we all know ;-)

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    8. To support a certain blog writer, who we all love and adore as the very best. Don't leave out the last part.

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    9. If a person is not in a big hurry, they shouldn't pay retail price for anything. I have 2 Morningstar SS-15L's and paid $110 for one (bare) and $120 for the other with the battery thermocouple and RS-232 adapter included. Three hundred is too much to pay for a used-good 60A Tri-star (pwm). After taking apart some of the other brands (cheap Chinese or bad USA models), I want the good stuff. -pdxr13

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    10. I just can't see paying as much for a charge controller as I did the panel. Other factors shorten a batt life so I can't see the need to spend extra for life extension when cheap materials or cold snaps might shorten it anyway. If I had $1k in panels and the same in batts, I could see the extra. But not for $100 panel and $80 batt.

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  2. hi,
    hair is magnificent.
    moved to ohio ten years ago.
    the neighborhood then was what was left of a thriving-when-the mills-were-going- blue collar enclave.
    still lots of empty houses as the resident fire bug died a few years ago.
    til then there was at least one arson every night.
    at least he cleaned up the houses drawing the drug addicts and whores.
    you can buy houses here for next to nothing.
    most now need major overhauls.
    one guy bought a house with his credit card!
    one lady in a different neighborhood sold hers for less than the property taxes.
    she was widowed and ha hoped for enough $$ to give her a bit of a cushion but it was not to be.
    anything can and will happen.
    you could end up in a cul de sac of mostly empty macmansions. kind of scary, that.
    future has never been readable but plan as best you can for bad times. keep away from debt.

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    1. How do people read about these kind of house fire sales and not worry? "It can't happen here"?

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  3. Hung up on your "myths".... So perfectly appropriate for almost everything wrong just about everywhere.
    There literally was no reason for much of the structure and behaviours of our civilization and the individuals in it that can not be explained by unreal "myths" of all sorts.
    Scientific method is the only way to approach your behaviors. Observe, Hypothesis and Predict, Test, Observe results, Revise Hypothesis and predictions, test again, repeat.
    The hypothesis of the pro-global warming and anti-global warming folk can be tested by time and observations. Your personal time and observations. After all, their are also the conspiracy theories out there that may mislead you if you accept their evidence. Only your own personal evidence counts. Then you can draw your own hypothesis and predictions (and don't forget to test for how closely they match your observed reality).
    I am a big fan of the philosophy that they only thing you can KNOW with absolute certain is real is your own existence (not your body, but your awareness, because even a hallucinated awareness is a real awareness, but you can hypothesis a real world beyond yourself, model it, make predictions based on your model and test your model and predictions based on your observations.
    My model of the world shows that their is a high likelihood that this planet, though large, is limited in scope - and thus all non-recyclable materials in/on it will eventually become scarce if used at any sort of consistent or increasing rate, like, say, fossil fuels. This is MY model and it agrees closely with other models by other people such as Peak Oil... So I can make predictions like a society that requires plentiful fossil fuels will eventually suffer due to this reliance, and that only by being as distant from this society as possible and living with as few fossil fuel inputs as you can you will best positioned to survive the suffering that society will endure.

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    1. Philosophy gives a headache, literally. Don't know why, perhaps it was after I found out how silly they look the longer after they founded their theories. Nitche, for instance, had some good quotes, but basically bat crap crazy. How many philosophers had mental illness from a dose of VD?

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    2. Less than you might think. But the scientific method is the only way that philosophy can be applied and kept from becoming pointless navel gazing or complex idiocy.
      Test and Observe. Forever and ever more, everything you think, and every thing you think you know. IF you can do those two simple things with minimal prejudice or preconceived notions you will end up with a decent working model of the world, which will eventually allow you to deal with it in the manner you feel best.

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    3. So, kind of like I already do. I'm paranoid from experience, being paranoid is validated every day, hence to stay paranoid or even increase that level is a viable philosophy. They are out to get me.

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    4. "IF you can do those two simple things with minimal prejudice or preconceived notions you will end up with a decent working model of the world..."

      THANK YOU!!! I've been in the technical arena for over 40 years and it's amazing how few people - even highly educated ones - seem to grasp that concept. Well done, sir!

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  4. Enjoy ;-)

    https://solarmoviez.to/movie/the-twilight-zone-season-3-12557/508487-8/watching.html

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