TAE 3.0: What do you want to see?

[gurusid]

Hi Folks,

Firstly big Thank You :cheer: to Ilargi and Stoneleigh for all their dedication and effort to get something like this up and running.

I’d thought I’d start a thread that gave people the opportunity to suggest some features/points they would like to see on the new TAE 3.0. Yes I know there was a similar exercise a while back, but for the life of me I have no idea where it is, so one feature I think would be great is an ‘article search’ facility, preferably ‘key word’ that is easier to use than the current one, which is a bit clunky and does not produce any articles but all the comments as that’s what it searches. Does that make sense or am I missing something?

Thanks again,

L,
Sid.

[Variable81]

Like you said Sid, a big thanks to Stoneleigh & Illarghi for all the work they’ve done on TAE and knowledge they’ve shared – certainly helped in waking me up from my sleeper-stupor.

But when it comes to TAE 3.0, what I’d like to see might be a little controversial. Basically, I’d like to see less of what TAE has been about for the past 5 years – “The Big Picture”.

It’s not that I don’t think “The Big Picture” isn’t important – it is, incredibly so – but I feel as if TAE has covered it every which way they can. There’s not much more to say about it, and it’s now to the point that Stoneleigh is travelling the world, pushing what could be considered a bit of a ‘canned’ message.

I have to ask myself what is the benefit of this?
Obviously enlightening more individuals to the risks that face the world is a good thing, but does it come at the cost of less time/effort being invested in the already-existing TAE community? And are these tours helping increase TAE membership/discourse in any meaningful/measurable way?

Even if it were, I guess I’d still be pointing out my displeasure that TAE feels like it is stagnating in that very little is being offered here (from my POV) aside from a commentary from Illarghi about our descent into depression.

What I’d love to see is more life blown into TAE by focusing on things that can be done to be a stronger community of people who “get it”. Some questions I hope everyone at TAE will consider:

Are there transition town and/or survivalist networking opportunities within our communities that are coming up which we should be aware of? TAE could play a role in connecting members between those groups to get a cross-flow of ideas going.

Are there funding opportunities that TAE can present which can benefit the entire community? The 4-hour DVD set is a great first step, but I think there are individuals within the TAE community who have access to resources and may be wanting to invest them into tangible community-based initiatives but don’t know how to get started in doing so.

Is there anyway to teach members within the TAE community the skills they’ll need to survive the hardships that are coming? While we still have access to the internet we should make as much use of it as possible – either providing links to “how to” videos & guides or actually creating them ourselves we can increase the practical knowledge of TAE’ers who want to start building up their practical skills.

To be fair, perhaps some of these issues have already been addressed at TAE and are floating around somewhere on the website – since the shift to TAE 2.0 I haven’t been as diligent in searching every nook & cranny of this site. But generally I feel that 2.0 gets too much of a bad rap for hamstringing the engagement within the TAE community – again, it’s the feeling that we’re stagnating as a community.

I love the breadth and depth of knowledge that is frequently shared here on TAE, but for it to survive I think there needs to be a transition from WHAT we need to know to HOW we can start doing something about it.

Cheers,
-Variable

[sensato]

I understand the considerable effort required to do it, but I miss the 2 or 3 times a week commentary by Ilargi and occasionally Stoneleigh in TAE 1. Usually building on some current event(s), I think that approach allows newcomers an easier entry point into the Big Picture. Each analysis, as well as showing relevant quotes, provided a set of links to external articles on related news, for those who wanted to explore the cited reports further.

With TAE 2, I bookmarked TAE Comments -> Main Forum, and seldom venture beyond the comments tagged as New there.

Perhaps TAE 3 can take the form of TAE 1, with comments showing below each post.

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

Perhaps TAE 3 can take the form of TAE 1, with comments showing below each post.

Believe it or not, but that’s where they are.

For some reason people don’t get that, and I think that’s probably because they’re not on the front page. But should we want them there? That used to bring us complaints from people about having to scroll forever and a day.

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

I love the breadth and depth of knowledge that is frequently shared here on TAE, but for it to survive I think there needs to be a transition from WHAT we need to know to HOW we can start doing something about it.

To be fair to ourselves, that’s what we set up the Lifeboat section for. And then that sort of bled dry. Sure, there may be something wrong with the format we put it in, and suggestions in that regard are very welcome, but from where I’m sitting it’s the third party input that dried up as we went along. And we’re not the people to write more than the very occasional piece that would fit there.

To recoup, first of all we set up TAE 2.0 on the wrong platform. Joomla is a dinosaur. But we had to leave Blogger because of the incessant and ever meaner attacks on us, plus the fact that Google provides no service to deal with such attacks. We also set up different categories for articles. First, Categories for shorts and Features for longer pieces. This was because in the late days of TAE 1.0, we got in each others way for attention: TAE 1.0 had one piece a time on the front page, and that meant when someone just posted something, someone else had to wait or the first piece would disappear from the front page in no time. We also had Finance, Energy and Earth categories (we won’t anymore).

The way it turned out, however, was that Nicole and I set off on a 3 month trip down under, which was loaded to the brim with lectures, meetings, travel etc. That left Ashvin to hold the fort for a while, which not all our old time readers liked, though he did a great job. Then not long after we got “back” to Europe, at some point both Ashvin and VK (who ran our Twitter and Facebook) left. Then it was basically just me, since Nicole was honing her speaking skills. But I was by then badly in need of hip surgery. Which takes a lot more out of you than just a few hours under the knife, at least in my case. In fact, it took years of pain, and increasingly so, and if you’re me, that makes you real cranky and lots of fun to be around. It’s been 4 months now, and it’ll take a lot longer still to function well.

All this to say we had a bad spell, but we’re on our way back up. Setting up on yet another platform isn’t all that easy, we can’t get it wrong a second time. Plus we have 5.5 years of content to take with us. And no money to hire people to help us do it; we have a programmer volunteering, but that comes with time limits. We’ll get there though, not to worry.

I don’t agree with the assessment that things have already been said when it comes to finance, that’s just as much of an illusion as the entire economic system is. As you’ll see when things turn down once more. When it comes to preparedness, though Nicole is increasingly moving in that direction, and will undoubtedly write about it too, we will need third party input, and we welcome it. As for Nicole, she just did another tour of Oz and NZ, and had no time to write, but she will of course come back.

[gurusid]

Hi Ilargi,

Sheesh, sorry to hear about your health problems, I know from personal experience what a rough deal hip problems are – its the main joints in your body. Amazing that you have managed to keep this site running at all!

I was thinking of putting a few links to this page in the comments on some recent articles to let people who don’t normally hang out backstage that there is a ‘suggestions box’ for what they’d like to see – unless you think it would generate too much feedback – given your delicate health that might not be advisable right now – what thinks thee?

Hope you get well soon,

L,
Sid.

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

Sid,

I’m not so delicate. So go ahead. And I’m Ilargi, not Illarghi. By the way, Nicole will arrive here in my temp abode in Holland later today (from New Zealand) and stay for a few weeks, so shoot!

[Viscount St. Albans]

Things I’d like to see:

A video tour of Stoneleigh’s Ontario Compound.
Use the audio and visual walk around chit-chat as a jumping off point for lectures on:
1) The merits of urban vs. rural setting
2) The mechanics of alternative heating/cooling/cooking/electric generation
3) The value of community connection
4) An example of analyzing a region’s (in this case ex-urban Ottawa farmland) pros and cons and adapting one’s living conditions to maximize benefits within that niche……..Explore optimal adaptive living arrangements in other settings (ones more suburban and ones more urban).

[gurusid]

Hi Ilargi,

Corrected! Some wierd form of Dixlesyia… I take it you know how auspicious your name is?

L.
Sid.

[Variable81]

@ilargi,

“And no money to hire people to help us do it”
What I’d love to see is something along the lines of Kickstarter where we can see the goal we’re working towards, what it costs, and how close we are to that goal (e.g. “$5,000 to hire a graphic designer”)

As it stands, it’s just sort of a “we’re TAE and we need your money!”. Not to suggest the money isn’t going where it is needed or isn’t being used well, but it’s hard to connect with the outcomes of the donations we provide.

Again, the DVDs are a great idea as they’re something tangible that help educate the community while at the same time putting $$$ in the TAE coffers.

@Viscount,

I think you’re on the same page I as am when I start thinking about the actionable vs. the Big Picture. I’d love to see something like you’ve proposed (educational piece by Stoneleigh on the operational side of sustainable living), as there are tons of “survivalist” videos for free on YouTube and whatnot, but not as much in the vein of “preparedness”.

Identifying the hard goods & tools, or as Viscount put it “the mechanics of alternative heating/cooling/cooking/electric generation”, one would seriously need to consider as well as the risks surrounding them (nothing as complicated as FMEA, but just what one needs to be aware of if converting over to propane/wood/solar/etc. or by producing one’s own eggs/poultry/etc.) would be helpful.

Like the World of Change DVD set, I think this is something that could be sold at a premium to cover the costs of production as well as serve as a tool to generate income for TAE?

@all,

Lastly, this is a question I’ve been sitting on for a long time as it never felt appropriate to ask it (and still doesn’t, but I think it needs to be raised at some point). I love that TAE tries to position itself as an “inoculation” against fear & ignorance of what’s happening in the world and to try to prepare people as much as possible to mitigate some very unhappy circumstances in the future.

Unfortunately, TAE is a small community within the grand scheme of humanity, and many will not receive the inoculation that TAE provides. Thus, while we can thoughtfully/intellectually discuss issues that will no doubt lead to panic, fear and ultimately conflict/violence I think it’s important to recognize that the population at large may not approach these issues with the same level-headedness we see here on TAE.

So I suppose the question(s) would be:

a) When will it be appropriate to more openly discuss the panic, fear, conflict and violence we’re likely to witness as deflation takes hold; and

b) What steps can one start to take to mitigate these issues?

Cheers,
Variable

[peacegarden]

I have been “checking in” every so often, hoping that TAE would revert to or move forward to a platform more like the original.

So many of the wonderful comment community seemed to disappear, driven away by Ashvin, the sparse entries in this format, or some other reason. I love the articles, but I loved the long comments sections…to me just as valuable as the articles themselves.

So, my vote is for a format similar to the old one…allowing for a building of commentary and community.

[bluebird]

@Variable – I have the same concerns. From where I am sitting, no one ever discusses the collapse of ponziworld nor the fear and panic that will most likely come to many people.

It seems that a major event needs to happen first to get people’s attention before they might become open to hearing us. But I welcome any ideas for suggestions when that time comes.

[jal]

More discussion and involvement in the comments by I&L.

[Glennda]

I like the idea for a goal amount of money. I’d be ready to help with that.

Also like the idea about topics for living in a prepared way in Urban settings. We have some good examples of urban homesteads here in the Bay Area. I’ll see if some feelers out there might find some photo/film essays.

[rheba]

I liked your comment on a previous thread. You said something like ‘ZH doesn’t tell us how we should be spending our time…’ A lot of people who have been prepping for awhile have done what they can do and now have to consider how to live in the broadest sense. Everyone wants to tell us how to invest our money but not how we should spend our time or live our lives given that we now know what we know.

[rheba]

I used to look at TAE several times a day and to have really good exchanges with people. El G. helped me figure out a solar hot water problem. I really think that having good discussions and conversations is what brings people back. There are a lot of websites – Martenson’s, Greer’s Green Wizards, Ruppert’s, and their lifeboat sections just don’t work because people drop the conversation.
The only sites I go to a lot are Economic Undertow and The Archdruid Report. In both cases – a short essay, a bunch of comments, some back-and-forth between the blogger and the people and some back-and-forth between the people themselves. There is obviously control exercised. Steve Ludlum does a particularly good job of gently reminding people to behave themselves. He ignores a lot of what would annoy me but it seems to work out.
I am looking forward to a discussion of ‘Near Term Extinction.’

[Variable81]

@bluebird,

My concern is that as people become more afraid they will actually be less open minded to the advice of those who frequent TAE, as the TAE doesn’t offer much along the lines of quick, easy solutions that allow them to continue along the lines of myopic, thoughtless and consumption-driven living (sorry, being a bit harsh towards the sheeple this morning, aren’t I?).

I see them becoming more open minded to demagogues who promise them a return to the affluence they lost and point the finger at those who are to blame (i.e. anyone but the demagogue him/herself or the throng of sycophants who follows them, of course). These demagogues might even point to groups of individuals like TAE’ers who look to have suffered less than the masses (because they had the good sense to prepare – but obviously demagogues won’t spend any time talking about that) as the enemy should TAE’ers question the legitimacy of said demagogue or the sermons s/he espouses.

In short, Krugmanites crucifying those who denounce debt along the freeway to New (Rome) York? Or worse, Garth Turner’s Fourth Reich of “blog dogs” that punishes any who would either a) buy a house at the peak of a bubble, or b) question why Turner would advise selling one’s home if highly mortgaged only to then jump into a just-as-risky (if not more risky) financial mmarket?

I suspect those two scenarios are a bit over-the-top, but hopeful it illustrates the idea of a future where demagogues capture the imagination of people who’s lives have been shattered by economic collapse and deflation/depression.

@rheba,

Further to your point I’d love to see articles at TAE which start to focus on what we can do and how we can (should?) live our lives, but I hope the article authors will start to take into consideration more the generational and wealth differences of individuals within the TAE community (i.e. solutions that might work for 50-somethings near retirement may not work for 20-somethings that have just succeed in liquidating their debts and have only begun to build up assets).

I’m not sure if people at TAE are familiar with the book The Fourth Turning, but I do appreciate its attempt to show inter-generational differences and how each generation will react to a Crisis when it arises (as it impacts each generational cohort at a different time in their lives).

I also really enjoy The Archdruid Report and the thought-provoking posts of JM Greir. I’d be very interested to know if Stoneleigh/Ilargi have corresponded with him in the past and how closely their views on the future are aligned, as JMG has of late been emphasizing the fatalistic/apocalyptic obsession seen in the Peak Oil camp as opposed to the slow decline of humanity that he believes we face. I wonder if he sees TAE as a bunch of doomers or if he generally agrees that there will be a sharp financial collapse (arguably near-apocalyptic for those who never suffered financial/economic hardships yet in their lives?) followed by a slow entropic decline out of the Age of Hydrocarbons and back to an agrarian-style civilization.

Perhaps I’ll comment on JMG’s blog and see if I can discover his awareness and/or views on the TAE community.

Cheers,
Variable

[gurusid]

HI Folks,

One thing I think is worth mentioning is that we all need to become self actuating and not rely on others to provide all the solutions. There are many pundits and bloggers out there as has been mentioned, and they all have their own particular stance, as indeed we all have. However it is generally going to be a case of ‘hyper localism’ and working out what is best for your own situation. Its either that or hit the highway or the sea as in the case of Dmitri Orlov – there is no ‘one size fits all’ plan or solution. Its going to be about being flexible and adaptable, about being forgiving both of oneself and of others. Its also about sharing what you have found works for you (as I have done here and here.

Also examples such as The Power of Community while not perfect give a good indication of what is possible.

And of course most of the ‘future’ will not be in front of machines like this one that you are sat in front of now, reading this. So get out there and start digging or ‘not-digging’, mulching and forest gardening, insulating and ‘off-gridding’ and post your stories, discoveries trials and tribulations here to share with others while we still can.

That’s what I’d like to see…

L,
Sid.

[jal]

As the years go by, it seems that time goes faster.

So, I put my watch in the freezer to see if I could freeze time.

B)

That doesn’t seem to work.

Now, I’m going spend more time walking bacward. Maybe that will help to turn the clock back.

:ohmy:

I don’t have enough time, to to write down my life long learning curve to help someone else.

Those someone else will not take the time to read or benefit from my experiences.

Everyone has a different past history.
Everyone will have a different future.

Most bloggers have an archive of their writings and/or links, which could be usefull to someone preparing TO ADAPT TO CHANGES.

Become adaptable.

[SteveB]

Variable81 post=7552 wrote:
b) What steps can one start to take to mitigate these issues?

Cheers,
Variable

Variable, I suggest getting familiar with The Work of Byron Katie, starting with her first book, Loving What Is, and her web sites, http://www.byronkatie.com and http://www.thework.com. Have stressful thoughts about the future? I do too, then I question them and turn them around. 🙂

[Mark T]

I would have to agree with peacegarden’s comment “So, my vote is for a format similar to the old one…allowing for a building of commentary and community”.

I really like the old photographs from the past being used as article headers.

[Viscount St. Albans]

Re: A proposed discussion topic — Don’t Prepare for Collapse

By prepare, I refer to material preparation: Collecting canned goods, can openers, silver coins, mini-whiskey bottles, generators, hammers etc.

Hoarding stuff frames the future incorrectly.

The most useful preparation is psychological rather than material. The future is about adaptation to deprivation. So start that project now. Identify the goods and services that give you pleasure, and take them away — one by one. Practice acceptance.

The scale can be grand or modest. Turn off your air conditioner and feel the summer heat, or limit yourself to a single flashlight battery per week after sundown. The name of the game is recognizing our elastic standards of comfort. The tent dwelling Syrian children trapped in a summer oven desert refugee camp might be happier than you are. Practice deprivation until that profound incongruity makes sense.

My idol: The political prisoner locked in a sensory deprivation cell who nevertheless entertains himself by gliding his fingertips over the abstract pattern of millimeter deep ridges and valleys in the rough concrete floor. If you can get there imaginatively, then your life raft is ready to cross oceans.

[TAE Summary]

* The Big Picture is passe’; It’s all been done before; Zero Hedge tells us how to invest our money; We need TAE to tell us how to spend our time

* 1.0 was peak TAE; Articles are the cake, comments are the icing and Shorpy pics are the glass of cold milk; TAE Community is stagnant and suffers from anaerobic decomposition; TAE could be linked-in for doomers

* TAE had a bad spell but it’s past now; TAE 2.0 is on the wrong platform; TAE had to leave Blogger because the incessant attacks were far too entertaining; TAE 1.0 only allowed one front page article at a time while Stoneleigh, Ilargi and Ashton were all shouting “zoom in on me”; TAE 3.0 will transform TAE into part of TPTB

* Please post video of Stoneleigh’s Ontario Compound; Please include lots of footage of the gold bullion storage facility, the stills and all three weapons caches

* TAE is innoculation against fear and ignorance; Immunitly allows us to discuss panic, fear, conflict, and near term extinciton openly; I & S should be more involved in the comment section

* Time is hyperbolic and doesn’t yield to cryogenics; TAE community is diverse geographically, economically and chronogically; One size doesn’t fit all; The future will be blogless

* Deprivation looms; Adopt, adapt and improve; Hoarding skews one’s perspective; Jettison your pleasures and embrace incongruity; Food, drink and sunlight are vastly overrated

[gurusid]

Hi TAE Summary,

What happened to Panda Sharpshooter? Did he blow his brains out both barrels? Understandable given the current outlook… :whistle:

So what would you like to see?

L,
Sid.

[p01]

[strike]Doom[/strike]homestead; not Nicole’s, which I hope to see IRL.
There are still some industrial inputs, but minimal. It’s livable.
Enjoy, it’s a blast:

[Nicole Foss]

We’re working on our new version, and it should be more like the original. I very much hope to rebuild our wonderful commenting community. I’ve been lucky enough to meet many of them in person on my travels, but would very much like to see them back here.

I’m not sure I’ll do a video tour of my place. We’ll see. There’s not much to see really, and it’s not that photogenic. I already did a talk on what I did there in the way of prep. It’s available free on You Tube.

[Viscount St. Albans]

Where do you live?
How does the place work?
————————

Create a knowledge base of local infrastructure. Collaboratively pool information about your community and region that is widely dispersed in the far corners of the web.

I propose a user generated (wiki) section in which readers contribute knowledge of their own communities. There is no resource on the web that provides basic information about the critical infrastructure of daily living at the local level. Since most folks visiting this site regularly think about this kind of topic, why not make TAE 3.0 a go-to source for information and discussion.

A short list of questions that come to mind:

— What are the finances for your town and county? How much revenue and how much debt? What is the debt maturity schedule and how much of the budget is dedicated to interest on debt? What are the unfunded liabilities?
— What power plants supply electricity and how is that electricity generated (coal or natural gas or nuclear)?
— How is the local utility financed and what does it debt structure look like?
— How old is the local/regional power plant, what plant infrastructure upgrades are pending and how are authorities planning to finance them?
— What are the sources of drinking water? How large is the watershed and what are potential sources of watershed contamination. Does the watershed overlap multiple conflicting local government boundaries?
— How is drinking water distributed (the pipes) and how old is that infrastructure and is there any estimation of its state-of-repair (data regarding water leakage etc. What are plans for infrastructure updates and how will that be financed?
— Where and how is the waste disposed (human, industrial, solid and liquid)
— Is there local agriculture? Could it be expanded if necessary?
— What industries support the local tax base? Are those industries shrinking or growing? Do any depend critically on certain specific one-off tax breaks from the local/regional government?
— Does the region have natural resources (timber, soil for farming, fishing, minerals, coal, oil, natural gas)
— What is the proximity to routes of transportation (rail, river, canal as well as roads)
— What natural hazards present recurrent problems that are currently papered-over with federal disaster relief (floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes).
— Are there any long festering environmental hazards that pose medium or long-term threats threats to critical infrastructure (like drinking water). These threats include things such as moth-balled factories, military bases, mines, superfund sites, state environmental remediation sites.
— Have local sites of soil contamination been mapped and are there any existing models for the movement of soil contamination plumes over time
— How do local leaders envision the region in 10 years (are they staking the future on specific endeavors, like residential real estate development, or shale gas drilling, or university expansion, or fill-in-the-blank).

James Howard Kunstler has discussed topics like these ones on his podcast. For the most part, his discussions revolve around regional analyses such as Southwestern US, Northwestern US, Southeastern US etc. Some of my favorite podcasts are the ones where he discussed the pros and cons of different cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Seattle, and Atlanta.

[Variable81]

@Viscount,

I came across a Resiliency Assessment tool on Transition Guelph that might address some of the questions/issues you are raising.

Maybe the TAE community can take a look and see if it’s something we should include in TAE 3.0 (or something similar):

https://transitionguelph.org/HRA.php

Cheers,
Variable

[p01]

stoneleigh post=7614 wrote: I’ve been lucky enough to meet many of them in person on my travels, but would very much like to see them back here..

This green slime is falling off the back of the bus, as they say, so I’ll probably be missing the merry reunion, because internet access will be the thing to go next after a job loss or when switching to a factory floor job. We’ll see. Things on the ground (as opposed to nice graphs and statistics) are rapidly deteriorating for many people I know, also.

[Viscount St. Albans]

@ Variable

The Transition Guelph Excel Spreadsheet is a very useful tool to bring some objective and quantitative analysis to the essentials of daily life.

I’d like to expand upon this type of analysis. I’d like to explore where individuals can go to research basic facts about their local infrastructure. Real estate is generally the biggest financial transaction that any individual will ever make, and too often that decision is based on little to no understanding of local infrastructure and its related finances. The impending credit crunch will make the status and maintenance of basic local infrastructure very prominent in the minds of most people. The days when towns or counties could access global markets for financing infrastructure projects will be gone. Thus, it would be a great service to illuminate the sources of information about the state of one’s current local infrastructure. Questions such as: How old and derelict are the sewer and drinking water pipes and power distribution lines should be of far greater relevance than the local school district’s latest nation-wide standardized exam scores.

Some background to explain my interest.
I live in Palo Alto, CA. Epicenter of the Google, Facebook, Intel, Silicon Valley Universe. My neighborhood, College Terrace, on the Southern Edge of Stanford University is among the most expensive in the nation (a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom 1000 square foot home will easily cost more than $1 million). That being said, a local recently began to ask questions about the soil beneath our feet, and the deeper he dug, the more the soil stank of cookie dough (hint: That’s probably not a good sign). Long story short, we’re living next to one of the nation’s most extensive Superfund Sites and virtually nobody in the neighborhood realized this slightly relevant fact. And it turns out the EPA would strongly prefer that nobody knew or asked any questions about it.

If you’re in the mood for a real humdinger of a story about the relevance of understanding local infrastructure, then please dig into my neighbor’s exhaustive research on the subject, and don’t rest your head on the feather pillow until you’ve applied the lessons to your own situation.

https://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=88

[jal]

Hi TAE Summary

A balanced approach.
“One foot in each camp” -I&S

See —

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly13/EricA7-13.html

The attraction to believe in cultural, financial, or ecological Armageddon is deeply compelling. One can even find data to support these beliefs from commentators or scientists that share one’s outlook. However, in over 2,000 years this has never turned out to be the case. Let’s take two sudden and remarkable ones: The Crash of 1929 and “The Year Without a Summer” in 1816.

(snip)

What I’m saying is, if you want food, then GO MAKE FOOD. Be a producer, not a consumer.

I’ll add a point.

Society has trained you to use your cash input and to turn it into a cash outflow.

Smarten up.

Become a winner.

Make your cash outflow less than your cash input.

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

The attraction to believe in cultural, financial, or ecological Armageddon is deeply compelling. One can even find data to support these beliefs from commentators or scientists that share one’s outlook. However, in over 2,000 years this has never turned out to be the case.

Huh? What?

[jal]

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly13/EricA7-13.html#sthash.LEgxffSR.dpuf
The attraction to believe in cultural, financial, or ecological Armageddon is deeply compelling. One can even find data to support these beliefs from commentators or scientists that share one’s outlook. However, in over 2,000 years this has never turned out to be the case.

Huh? What?

Its not my quote. I would say that “Armageddon” is a perception of the beholder.

Roots on the Ground (July 10, 2013)

Part 2 of a guest essay on food security.
Here is Part 2 of a guest essay by longtime contributor Eric A on resilience and food security: become a producer, not a consumer.

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly13/EricA-pt2-7-13.html

[Viscount St. Albans]

Detroit — is it worth a gamble?

Now that the bankruptcy boil has been lanced, could a savvy real estate gambler roll a lucky seven, or is this dice game still loaded?

James Howard Kunstler has often illuminated Detroit’s strategic geographic advantages. Once the peripheral services (street lights, water distribution, sewers, police etc.) have contracted to a compact core, will it be possible for Detroit and its real estate values to rise from the ashes in our lifetime (next 30 years)?

[Viscount St. Albans]

Ask Ilargi & Stoneleigh.

There are many online interviews of Stoneleigh, and a even a few snippets of Ilargi offering tears in the rain wisdom. But if you’re like me, you struggle to absorb these intertube exchanges with the wide-eyed squishy incredulity of a thoroughly befuddled Officer Deckard.

The interviews disappoint me.
Whilst dunking my Tostitos in great gobs of mild salsa, I try to temper my disappointment. But it’s getting tedious. The line of questioning is too formulaic. As the question mark drops into place, the pop-hiss of cracked aluminum and carbonated beverage puts me to sleep. Somebody needs to shake things up. Something. Anything. Smash the family crystal against the marble mantlepiece.

Sandals or flip-flops?
Do you enjoy shellfish?
Are you afraid of Ferris Wheels?

Ask anything. But keep it short. One sentence. No monologue, no commentary. Be original. After 4+ years, ask something that hasn’t been mentioned before. More importantly, have a good follow up. If you’re digging ruts in a well worn path, then the answer is one word, “Archives”, or maybe a link if one is feeling ambitious.

Whose line is it anyway meets Frost-Nixon.

[Variable81]

“All these moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain. Time… to die…”

[Author]

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