The usual thing that most of us do is not do things that make other folks want to blow our vehicles up. That's how I've avoided getting my stuff blown up, at least.
That's a lot of it. I helped facilitate protests during Iraq2, and it feels like it did very little compared to efforts, I dunno, volunteering at the local homeless shelter?
I do a bit of activist work still, and help with protests from time to time. This year I joined up with some folks and we have a street medic group that has been supporting some local protest efforts, fortunately it's really only been needed once this year, when some folks got pepper sprayed and needed to decontaminate.
However, even when protests might be effective, there are a couple of other relevent things:
there has been very little time to react to anything because this admin just kind of seems to operate under some chaotic principle of YOLO, so you can't plan protest a month out for an event that is planned for two months. I don't think even the admin is thinking that far ahead,
there are about 4 other things that folks have been working on, even if we don't add in the 5 other things that dropped in the last month that are worth attention. The zone is flooded as they say...
Well, having spent some time operating a 12VDC system last year when I moved into some shacks, I will say that I find it a lot more convenient to run 120VAC.
I end up converting stuff anyhow, because all my loads run at different voltages- even though I had my lights, vent fan, and heater fans running on 12V I still ended up having to change voltages for most of the loads I wanted to run, or generate a AC to to charge my computer and run a rice cooker.
Not to mention that running anything that draws any real power quickly needs a much thicker wire at 12V. So you're either needing to run higher voltage DC than all your loads for distribution and then lowering the voltage when it gets to the device, or you simply can't draw much power.
Not that you can't have higher voltage DC; with my newer system the line from my solar panels to my charger controller is around 350VDC and I can use 10awg for that... but none of the loads I own that draw much power (saws, instapot, rice cooker, hammond organ, tube guitar amp) take DC :D
Do you have a website with your system on it? I have an off-grid building I need to add solar to in the next year or so. After I fix the foundation and roof, of course. Naturally I’m exploring options for item 387 on the todo list instead of think about how I’m going to jack the building up.
4KW of panels, 400W 48V
EG4 6000XP charge controller/ inverter
3x EG4 LifePower4 48V batteries
a raspberry pi running solar assistant
I feels like a bit overkill, and there is still a whole mppt unused on the 6000xp so I could still double my panel input. Also solar assistant tells me that I rarly go below 75% battery storage. If I just wanted to run my fridge and assorted convenience loads (and ran things like table saws off a generator) then I could get away with a lot less of a system.
But I'm operating a recording studio, and there were a couple days this winter where I had a full-band session and a couple days of storms and got down to below 50%.
[please excuse this exploratory fiction, as I am recovering from running a chainsaw all morning and am feeling old and tired]
I'm almost 50 and mostly retired except for work I like doing (producing musical events or performing).
About the time my kiddo graduated high school, I moved to a rural area far from cities, and about 18 months ago I bought some land that had primitive shacks on it.
I spend a lot of time reading history. I assume that the US fails eventually;
not because I have any illusions about surviving that house fire, have a lack of awareness of the mass death that would cause, or fantasies about how I'd be able to function in some post-US world.
That assumption comes out of watching the capitalists strip the wiring from the walls of US soft power along side watching the fact that it's 85 degrees in March at 6500 feet here... "climate isn't weather" is true, but I'm not an idiot and we didn't have a real winter this year.
The failure of the US is terrifying, not because I and my community would mourn the loss of some glorious and benevolent order, but in the way that the death of my estranged parents was terrifying:
we are no longer doing things because we're forced by the fantasy of belonging to some larger political order, but now have to choose what to do.
Having read a lot about what the US has done in the world, I believe that a) it's unethical/racist/genocidal / exploitative in almost all its actions and b) I think the only actual hope for climate change is the end of the US as a world order. I don't know if the end of that order is sufficient to fix the ecosystem, which I feel is on the verge of some calamitous changes, but it certainly seems necessary.
Not having control over that failing system, and not having a lot of fantasies about belonging to the polis associated with that system, it's perhaps easier for me to look at its failure modes more clinically than I might have when I was 25 and saw it as an impenetrable solid face; I've moved downstream from Fisher's statement, and now it's much easier to see a possibility for the end of capitalism (or at least the uni-polar US world order) than the end of the world itself.
Not that it's the actions of a bunch of angry and over-educated leftists who would bring it about, but as has always been understood by Marxists (among whom I do not count myself), the failure leading to its dissolution are the inherent contradictions of capitalism itself.
Which makes me feel amazingly hopeful, actually. I don't have any real political power (beyond my affinity group), so it's nice to know (like Duncan instead of MacBeth) that these things could maybe take care of themselves without me doing anything I don't find ethical.
Because I believe that there is a future for humans, I spend a lot of time organizing with folks even when I think the short-term goals aren't super useful: for instance, doing ICE Watch support with local folks, shooting a lot of guns with folks who understood the wisdom of John Brown, or just being available to help out folks who have politics oriented around direct action.
I have been spending most of my time clearing the scrub oak from various parts of the land where I live to make the wildland fire interface a little less terrifying. I build a pretty sturdy solar power system here. I've spent the last couple of months getting my head into programming the esp32 and its peripherals. I got a ham license and have been working on building radio systems. Hopefully I will figure out how to get an underground cistern next month, and then act on the septic permit I got last year.
Other than that, I assume that things aren't going to change much in my life time... I just sit here in my shack playing banjo and hoping for the best.
Prognostication should be illegal and all, but I suspect that Trump will probably kick off in 6 months from a stroke, the Dems will elect Newsom, and then they won't do a damn thing to change anything, and we will be fighting the facists under worse conditions when they finally find a pretty face to solidify them.
So I look forward to dying of Super Ebola-fluenza at age 65 in the middle of a mid-June snow-hurricane near Bluff, UT while supporting a bunch of anarchist 30 year-olds in a drone-powered trench line while they fight the "Western Slope Fascist Front". But I bet I'll still be driving my Tacoma to that battle...
I have spent a lot of time in areas that have been impacted by uranium extraction, including wandering around the four corners area and discovering old uranium mines.
Combined with seeing how the extractive energy industry has treated old wells, where they do everything in their power to abandon them and put the burden of cleanup and mainteance of that remediation onto the public, I simply have no faith that nuclear power is "safe" as long as it's private industry doing the work.
I wonder if there is some kind of new law that we should be looking at drafting, in which we hold accountable folks who attribute bad actions to incompetence instead of malice despite the actors being explicitly malicious?
I think that covers a lot of western media in all the wars the US has waged in my lifetime:
it's always "a regrettable (but worthwhile) mistake" until it's a "horrific but unique war crime"... it's never "who the fuck said these vicious idiots could kill whoever they want and never face just and material consequences for their crimes".
This shit certainly seems intentional. Maybe the folks who are attributing things to "incompetence" are just projecting their own incompetencies in interpreting the world, but at this point I suspect that they to are complicit in this malice.
Damn, hoss, didn't think I'd wake up and have to read someone normalizing police violence.
Like, they could just not, you know, go around creating the conditions for their own trauma.... that's a much more legit strategy. That's why folks aren't having this discussion about, say, "fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime".
I know that violence creates traumatic responses, I've been getting a lot out of therapy after being illegally pepper sprayed by DHS last year. Real fuckin' hard for me to feel super sad that those officers probably had big feelings about that violence themselves when they could just, like, not go around assaulting folks.
Good luck on your response to this kind of rhetoric- I agree with you totally.
For instance, when I read stuff such as "I have seen an America that fought to remove the cancer of slavery"... it really makes me wonder with what eyes that "fact" has been seen.
In the last couple of weeks I've been reading a lot of WEB DuBois, who lays out pretty good first-hand material histories on the facts here. Or, for instance, yesterday I read a Frederick Douglas speech about John Brown.
When I read these sources, I don't think that the folks (other than the black folks fighting to free themselves) generally were fighting "to remove the cancer of slavery"... I see folks in power who, as a last resort accepted black folks into their lines.
If you read first person accounts of these things, if you read the literal words that folks were writing at the time, it's very easy to see that the obvious tactical and strategic reasons were almost overpowered by the blatent and deep racism of the folks in power.
It's easy to watch folks who will take the word of their 6th grade "history" teacher over reading, like, 2 books of first-hand sources and trace out the litany of other blatantly false understandings of the world on about every topic.
White supremacy culture is disgustingly sticky and oozes all through out folks' brains so much so that they can't even register the water in which they swim as existing. It's even not difficult to see past it if you just, like, read folks and listen when you feel uncomfortable, but damn, folks will just accept whatever BS propaganda they were given in grade school and wonder how come all these folks out in the world dismiss their idiotic positions.
Pretty sure this goes against guidelines here. Responding to someone else's response to quote and then talk about me is straight trash, especially embedding so many labels/ pejoratives aimed at me.
I guess Robert Gould Shaw grudgingly accepted everyone I guess.
I guess elected politicians like Thaddeus Stevens grudgingly accepted everyone and didn't run on a policy of anti-slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaddeus_Stevens
I didn't write anything ignorant. Your personal feelings and interpretation are yours to make, but that doesn't mean I'm ignorant for having the mainstream historical interpretation, or believing the United States is a redeemable nation.
I guess HN is cool with personal characters attacks like this though because I flagged them for review and they were left up. Good to know what you guys consider meeting your guidelines.
First of all, I don't know you personally. What I wrote about were historical facts.
I understand that often white-bodied folks become very triggered when folks point out that they might have a point of view informed by white supremecy culture. I have no idea what kind of body you have, but you are clearly very upset. I don't say that as a "gotcha, hah triggered ya", I say that as a person who has been often and deeply upset by this culture, and who can recognize similar patterns of hurt and harm in other folks writing. So while I have no actual idea about you or your actual state of mind or body, you read to me like a person who is very upset for reasons that have very little to do with postings on a message board.
On one hand, it's easy for me to say:
a - if you don't like being called out, don't call folks out. If you want to be hypercritical of folks, as you were doing up thread, you're gonna need a thicker skin
b - I believe that when you say "mainstream interpretation" you can pretty easily interpret that as "white", which is what I mean when I write that you specifically are operating from a position of white supremacy. You might not have noticed that in response to references to Frederick Douglass and WEB DuBois you counterpoised a couple of white "leaders", but I certainly did.
Secondly, even if I didn't just do what you're doing to other folks on this board and dismiss your writings out of hand as both based in whatever deep traumas you have around whiteness and general ignorance of the world, your political position is still quite bad.
Your position is what a lot of folks describe as "Blue MAGA", centered on the idea that the US used to be pretty dang good (if flawed) and that we need to work back towards that greatness.
To hold that position you need to ignore a whole lot of real and obvious history, and the way folks in the US have done that is to ignore the actual writings and words of non-white folks.
I am certain that you don't experience that ignorance you are maintaining as a process of de-humanizing those other people (at least until someone points that out, which can be very activating to read).
I don't expect you to be rational about these things, because being made to feel white is very traumatic to folks in white bodies.
I don't expect you to have the capacity to deconstruct your thoughts around race, either.
But if you ever are able to do that work, consider that what I'm describing is a very specific dismissal that you're doing, of a very specific historical selectiveness, and all you have to do to not do that is to read and listen.
That's not a personal attack. This isn't about your personal "character"; that's just the world, and your ignorant and (frankly) dehumanizing political position.
I'm sorry that it feels upsetting and personal to you.
Getting to a position where you can do that work of examining these things may be impossible, and you might find that it makes all the other white-bodied folks around seem quite menacing, but it's certainly work that will liberate you from the need to defend the indefensible.
Sure I'm a total mess. If you read my history I was an exec who fell out and is still rebuilding after being away from the world for a minute (and had my eyes opened/views change on race in America during that process and learning others lived experience though not even close to understanding what that lived experience was/is like).
You didn't call me out you piled on responding to someone else while using low effort/charicture making personal attacks. That's what I took issue with.
I replied to your statement:
" I don't think that the folks (other than the black folks fighting to free themselves) generally were fighting "to remove the cancer of slavery"."
With an example of a white politician who was elected by other white folks fighting "to remove the cancer of slavery" and who was then able to use his political power to sideline United States President Andrew Johnson who was trying to restore the seceded states without guarantees for freedmen, so not some obscure/irrelevant out of power white guy but someone who thwarted the US President's evil attempts. My example specifically countered what you said. Responding to what you say and giving factual examples isn't white centric. It wouldn't make sense to use non-white examples in that response.
I never said we need to work back towards greatness. I said the USA is redeemable and the best way to progress compared to the other options, and gave examples of improvement. I pointed out 'who we are' created children that didn't care about marrying outside race to awful racist parents and Michelle Obama is correct. This historically 'who we are' was directed at pre-Trump America current era America, not our entire history, with the historical reference to show improvement is possible. It's a common way to phrase it (as shown by Michelle Obama's usage), but I think threw the conversation off into something larger than the initial discussion (we need to fight against what Trump and his supporters are doing, and not normalize that they get to define 'who we are'). I'm not trying to whitewash history, I was continuing the original discussion about the Voice of America win and that we need to be positive and build on what wins we can and ham-fistedly referenced the Civil War as showing societal push to improve, and working towards something better.
You are the one who routinely has dehumanized me in this discussion, to the point of talking about me but not too me and labeling me with names/pejoratives and deciding my positions, and defining my motivations.
But you are right, I'm a mess, and I give up. Let Trump America be America now and forever I guess. You all win in your empowering the 40% and getting me as a member of the 60% out of the way.
There's a bit of writing in that direction if you're curious. I like Benjamin quite a but and have gotten a lot out of his thinking. Here's the wiki-level entry to it:
Unfortuantely, while I do come here for these kinds of discussions, it's moistly because I've excised the sociopathic and nationalistic folks from much of my medua and it's much easier to find those values among wanna-be venture capitalists.
I "value" their opinions insofar as they have an outsized influence on our world:
I feel like if I want to stay tapped into the progress folks are making on building the Torment Nexus, this website is where I will find folks breathlessly cheering it on.
Everything else is a half measure.
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