06/19/23

 Have refurbished my website.

Have been following a reddit user making a convincing long-term case for thermal coal as a potent investment opportunity (3-5 year horizon), as well as copper in advance of inevitable copper shortages, as lithium supply is greatly increasing while copper is not. Today read a comment or linked page that made the argument that ESG works against creating a stable environment and political support for oil companies to invest in wells and supply versus share buybacks or dividends to shareholders.

https://traderferg.substack.com/p/coal-the-beneficiary-of-dumb-energy

Considering this writer references Simon Michaux (author of several extremely well-sourced papers that indicate that there's not even remotely enough green minerals to electrify Europe, let alone transition to green everything), I'm inclined to believe them.

https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/19-simon-michaux

https://www.simonmichaux.com/copy-of-gtk-reports

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-cooling

https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/energy-infrastructure/

Also the Low Tech Magazine is now entirely solar powered which is super cool.

https://github.com/lowtechmag/solar/wiki/Solar-Web-Design

Unrelated: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/02/can-we-make-bicycles-sustainable-again.html

Random thoughts dump

 What if I could design a set of playing cards that contained information about cheap and easy cooking, warming, cooling, and fire, stuff that is incredibly important and should be spread for awareness. Like the concept of a rocket stove, or other information that has evolved over time, that will not be available during a collapse due to lack of information. Basic survival tech, all the amazing innovations of the last 200 years, that could be lost otherwise. 

Make it a pamphlet or something.

Post-Toorcamp packing list review

 Toorcamp was in July, I'm writing this now.

With each Toorcamp my packing list gets better.

The NIGHTMRKT was a great idea. My "pop-up" selling random electronics and other goods was a success. I was advised of two things: don't give things away for free, and to have much better signage, potentially cutesy and pretty for people. Selling vodka tinctures was useless, many people didn't understand the concept, and two days in I was giving them away for free. Also, there's so much alcohol already available for free that no one was going to pay for some random drink. What did go well were the raspberry Pis and decaf teas. Caffeinated teas weren't popular because most people don't drink caffeine late. The population of Toorcamp is definitely aging, hackers are aging, there are more kids and earlier bedtimes. 

Next time, have better signage, like a wooden sign with prices. Sell useful adaptation things and gadgets, like water filters or something. Consider leaning into perfumes. Use a regular propane tank and stove for tea due to better availability. I did make a lot less tea than expected. Definitely have more weed products available.

What worked and what to bring next time:

• Ziplock bags, regular and silicone/scent-proof
• Sharpies - useful
• Sunscreen - it was hot y'all
• Very Specific stickers
• Valuable tradeable goods (luci lights, sweet gale, small tea cozy, pirate boxen hacked with other software, mobilizon/sneakernet style). I have some additional ideas, like playing cards with cool adaptation designs or ideas on them, from low-tech magazine and others. You could also do one for gardening.

What not to bring next time:

• So many batteries
• Rope
• Metal straw
• Hot Hands warmers
• Very long LED solar string lights (someone always has Christmas lights, there is always power)
• Sleeping shorts (too cold)
• Radio (KLOL signal broadcasts only like a hundred feet)
• Breakfast oatmeal (bagged granola works fine, not here to eat)
• So much bagged rice (organize group meals next time)

Pandemic music

 I like to think everyone had some music that got them through the early stages of the Covid19 pandemic. 

Mine was a set this musician named Kora had played for Burning Man 2018:

https://soundcloud.com/kora-musique/kora-burning-man-2018-sunrise-set-on-maxa-xaman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLLsF0xCt3c

I walked for hours to this, worked to this, worked out to this. The rhythms kept me going. And now it reminds me of a uniquely unnerving time of my life.

Troubles with Private Internet Access VPN

 At some point, the machine for which I set up command-line access for Private Internet Access started giving me more and more troubles with PIA. The VPN connections build into GNOME would give a "client update needed" message next to each possible VPN connection, and no amount of re-installation or removal then new installation of the software would help. It turned out that PIA is pushing users to use their GUI, or so it would seem based on how hard it was to get OpenVPN (and also, OpenVPN3 sucks) to work. But in the end, removing PIA entirely, upgrading from Ubuntu 16.04.7 to 18.04 (because LTS support expired at the end of April 2021), and installing PIA with the GUI, worked.