Boston

My Christmas lights are on the same GFCI circuit as all my animal heated water buckets and stock tank heater. If the Christmas lights ever go off, I know I need to do some investigating.

And I think people sincerely overestimate the benefits of space manufacturing.

I also think people sincerely underestimate the challenges and expense involved in retrieving commercially useful amounts of material from asteroids, or of using those materials in situ for space-based manufacturing.

Achieving inexpensive launch capability with Starship, if possible, only scratches the surface of what needs to be in place to do any of this stuff.

There is no reason for colonizing the moon or Mars or even low Earth orbit that will ever come close to justifying the expense or hazards. Just because these things are so convincingly depicted in science fiction films or games doesn't make them any easier to do.

Political will may exist long enough to boots on the moon again, but it won't last long.

https://www.worldsbestcatlitter.com/natural-cat-litter/

Love this stuff

We use a corn-based litter

Not saying we haven't had to deal with substantial mud, but this is just the fake mud season that crops up during a mid-winter thaw. The lower layers of mud are still frozen and won't get fully involved for another month, I think.

This is actually a win-win for everyone. If you compost your garbage, then it won't sit in your trash barrels, getting gross and growing creepy-crawly things in it. That means you can probably send fewer trash bags to the landfill, saving you $$.

If your town doesn't offer curbside composting, ask around to see if any neighbors will take it. We have about 30 farm animals, ranging from rabbits to goats, and we maintain several fairly large piles out back of the house. I keep a five gallon bucket by the back door for all household garbage and used kitty litter, and carry it out to the piles a couple of times a week. The chickens follow me out and get first crack at it. I also take garbage from my daughter, who live nearby, and if anyone else in the neighborhood asked, I would gladly take their garbage, too.

All that yummy compost goes back into our fields and gardens in the summer.

But as for the law, I doubt it's being enforced at our level.

It's not mud season. Yet.

Anecdotally: my wife and I are just getting over it in Orange County.

Interesting.. similar conditions (even altitude), heard very loud series of bangs earlier. Thought maybe a tree limb hit the roof but nothing on the ground near the house.

When I was young, I thought I would see these things happen in my lifetime.

Now that I am 60, I am pretty sure I won't.

It bothers me less and less, though. Everyone has to come to grips with the fact that they experience the universe during a short window of time. I also am more aware of humanity's historical context. There have been over 10000 years of human civilization and culture around the world, and I have seen only 60 years of it; there is so much I have already missed and will never know, so why worry about the future stuff that I won't know about either?

That historical context also strongly suggests that our technological civilization is more fragile than we realize, and I'm OK with that. If this bothers you, then I suggest reading "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart, which chronicles human civilization on Earth after a pandemic wipes out most humans. I first read this almost 50 years ago, and the lessons are as relevant today as they were then.

Was going to say, buy a house and try to solve your own mouse problem. We buy snap traps in bulk, reuse them as much as possible, and are still using the jar of peanut butter I bought 3 years ago for bait. Average about one corpse a day.

I don't. Personally, I can count the number of people I know with home wind turbines on the fingers of no hands.

This interesting read might be a good place to start: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41219.pdf

I would look carefully at augmenting your system with a wind turbine, and a generator that can operate 24/7 when the wind turbine gets blown off the mountain top.

Hmm... last month I burned about half a cord of wood, so roughly $200. There was also some supplemental electric and propane at about $50. I keep the 1400 square foot two-story house at about 70 F most of the time.

I have a suitcase sized battery "generator" for short outages, on the order of 12 hours or so. I can run the freezer, fridge, and Internet for about that long before it dies. It weighs about 70-80 pounds and is a beast to haul around. It does not produce the 240 V that I would need to run the well pump, so no one is allowed to flush at the beginning of power failures if we don't have an estimated repair time.

For longer outages, I wheel out a 3500 Watt, 240 V portable gasoline-powered generator. I installed a transfer switch for the well pump only, and use a (now discontinued) APC Power Distribution Unit to split the 240V into a set of 120 V outlets that I can use to recharge the battery, and run the fridge and freezer. This solution used about 5 gallons of gas every 24 hours during the last set of multi-day outages. With this, a wood stove for heat, and a whole bunch of flashlights, we can continue in relative comfort indefinitely, provided we can get out and refill our 5-gallon gas cans.

We have solar, too, and briefly considered a powerwall setup, but we have no place to put it, and it would still end up being useless when the power is out for more than a day or so.

The moral of the story is that our civilization and all its comforts are very brittle. We feel very independent with our setup, but the moment we can't get gasoline, things get medieval in a hurry.

*I* don't know *any* socialists. But I do identify as a coastal elite.

My relative from Texas has told me that Vermont is overflowing with coastal elites, libtards, and socialists. Maybe that? Without knowing more about you and where you're coming from, it's hard to say.