Perhaps most of the product is a refueling station.
474 karma · joined March 9, 2019
Given that the writer of the article doesn't appear to have space issues, it would be cool to see a homebuilt unit with much higher insulation using an existing freezer to mine for parts. I really like the redneck Yeti coolers that people build.
A more trivial modification might be to put strips of plastic across the opening so that less air interchange occurs when you put stuff in or out.
That's an interesting point as opposed to the over-observed fragility of modern college students.
There's probably something to be learned from the different school and employment bottlenecks in Japan.
I'd be far more apt to take a local train in Tokyo or Switzerland than I would BART.
It seems to me that part of the problem is that the different parties involved have different needs and resources.
. Homeowners would like to not have their homes burn. They are on 30 yearish investment horizons but buy insurance a year at a time. They are a minority of homeowners in the state.
. Insurance companies want to make a profit but have little to do with forest management. Their only knob is your bill or a cancellation. They are in the position of a health insurance companies who can cancel a sick person's insurance at any time.
. The state .gov is only loosely related to the people, these are not elected officials running the show after all. The urban areas are in charge in any case, just keep the water flowing and the occasional state park for weekends.
. No doubt it's an interesting challenge to the feds, but the occasional town burning down is just a statistic.
. PG&E is not in the fire suppression business whenever possible, keeps costs down, went bankrupt anyway.
It's all at cross purposes.
Imagine the greenhouse load reduction from having half the population. It wouldn't surprise me if it's easier to push population growth down than it is to have good habits, especially after the low hanging fruit is plucked.
The one use case I've run into might be robot cars, probably lower latency/higher bandwidth. I don't know enough about where the intelligence actually lives or how much in the way of inter-car communications is actually required though.
It's also worth considering the distortions that illegal aliens put on electoral college numbers.
It is interesting to think about societies that can handle strong shock. Looking back, my guess is that the modern West doesn't have that capability built in. A proven model is one of a very strong hierarchy (monarchy perhaps) with strong social glue.
That isn't to say that you shouldn't go on extended vacation at your estate in Spain when a slave rebellion starts up near your place in Capua.
One problem is being old school enough that it's darned difficult to work for free.
They still seemed poorly laid out with crummy bathrooms (in this case, no piped water and a terlet that was basically an indoor plastic porta-potty) but I did admire the law-skirting.
There can also be avoidance of property taxes in some states I believe.
But...I really liked the idea of the above ground septic drain field.
A story. Emergency room visit for moi (super high BP plus PVC that appeared out of nowhere). They hook up an EKG machine, wait an hour, tell me to see my doctor. Since it was a heart thing, I got bumped to the head of the line but forget to fork over my insurance card.
Bill #1 $10k from hospital $2.5k from ER physician
Bill #2 $4k if I pay it right away in cash
Bill #3 $500 (deductible cost) once the insurance people are brought into the picture.
Another ebook non-profit I'd like to see is one that shepherds books through the copyright maze. No doubt there are scads of books in the public domain that no one has proven are actually there. Perhaps this exists already but it strikes me as a good separate, and highly targeted, kind of effort.
'round these parts, trees seem to perform two useful functions. They fall on houses during storms (quite common) or they burn down whole towns. Be careful what you wish for.
(reading through the referenced story, it parses like RA Lafferty. I would pay good money for a conversational Alexa of that type)
I'm older than you, never bothered with internet technologies and languages, and feel a bit of ennui about the whole deal. My guess is that a world that only consisted of workstation software and embedded systems, slightly fleshed out with an internet made up of Amazon, email, USENET (and cars without video games on the dash) is just the fantasy of a Luddite.
My temptation is to take on increasingly archaic skills. Rebuilding a carburetor or playing a musical instrument is already in the pallet, so maybe bookbinding or blacksmithing should be on the horizon.