grahamja

u/grahamja@reddthat.com
7 posts · 217 comments

Recent posts

Recent comments

War is the highest level of compeition for humans. No anacharchist society could ever survive being in competition with a legitimate nation state with mordern weapons. I have been to Kurdistan in Northern Iraq, the Kurds have their own legitimate government and are their own quasi nation state. I don't think comparing the horrors of the Syrian civil war (which had ungodly amounts of money and influence dumped into it from world powers), and the pinterest topic of solarpunk is fair at all. These two concepts are so incredibley far removed from each other, and the people there are just as reliant on fossil fuels and taking advantage of the environment as anyone else. It comes off as a luxury of wine drinking socialists to even compare the two. I never thought of "solarpunk" as the next logical step after overthrowing literal jihadist warlords with weapons from the russians and americans.

It would be like an earthship community, or an amish community. It relies on a legitimate government outside of it to provide actual protection from outside lawlessness. A solar punk commune couldnt exist in a wartorn country, it would become a refuge for those seeking shelter and nourishment. Imo a better thought experiment would be how can we build passive structures on lines of communication outside of cities that can provide potable water or shade from the sun. "Johhny Appleseed" John Chapman style of how can we help provide for everyone instead of how can we build a gated community to keep the barbarians out.

All the money spent on the US Military offering aid in places like Haiti, Nepal, and Philippines all came from the USAID bucket. Thw bottled water, fuel, shelters, food... all from that USAID line of accounting. I am very interested to know where the money is coming from to pay for aid in Venezuala, because it's probably the same bucket for dumping bombs into Iran.

I've used Ben's 100% deet before for field exercises. It melted the plastic casing of headlamp, but it works great. 30% does the same job to repel bugs you just have to re apply more often. We had no tents, it was 90F all night, and we were patrolling a lot day and night so having long lasting tick protection was great. If youre just doing yard work for a few hours, 30% deet is great.

As someome in the military, the console used to be the perfect device to recieve new media while you were deployed somewhere with no internet. Video games, movies, and albums used to all come on dicscs a console could read and play on the spot. The internet has created an environment where companies no longer ship a finished product on the disc, and relying on a world where all consumers have high speed internet. It has also pushed individuals that wont have internet for months at a time towards piracy. This also hurts research scientists / students out in places with poor internet service. I fully support companies that send their finished product out on some sort of physical medium that can operate as intended without a software update over the internet. Anything else is just a license key and should be clearly marked as such.

OneNote is stil my favorite note taking tool prior to putting something in a more permanent database. It is so easy to sync with coworkers and you can paste just about anything into it from another microsoft products keeps life simple. As long as sinpletons arent dumping screen shots into it then life is simple to convey thoughts / research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island

You can always plant more trees, paint all the buildings brighter colors, live underground, or move north?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_daytime_radiative_cooling

PDRC can be contrasted with conventional compression-based cooling systems (e.g., air conditioners) that consume substantial amounts of energy, have a net heating effect (heating the outdoors more than cooling the indoors), require ready access to electric power and often employ coolants that deplete the ozone layer or have a strong greenhouse effect.

Yikes.

It is an earned title, once a Marine, always a Marine. If you made it through boot camp then you're part of the gun club forever. It isn't necessarily that hard to get through boot camp, tens of thousands of high school / college age people do it a year. But earning your Eagle, Globe and Anchor is an emotional experience typically followed by a 4 year roller coaster of training, deploying overseas, and losing friends. If a stranger with no context says you don't rate a title you earned for life it is upsetting to say the least. Cynical people call most of the things Marines do is propaganda.