I’ve ramped up my garden from a hobby to being more productive for food this year.

Engaging in more rain catchment as well, though I need to get bigger tanks – at least some IBC totes, but ideally a 500 gal cistern. My pool is admittedly also my emergency water ration. Solar, I have panels and am amassing pieces, but I haven’t quite figured out how I want to integrate it. I have what is needed for a primitive off-grid setup, should it be necessary, but would love to go a couple steps further.

My biggest objective is getting proper acreage somewhere with water that I can transition into a more sustainable homestead.

You mention Xmas and last year was the first one all adults in my extended family agreed not to exchange any gifts, both to save money for rainy days ahead, and to also pinch this economy further to prove a point and bring people to wake up and vote Democrat (most sadly only learn by how it impacts their bottom-line, or the big numbers at the gas pump). We plan to do the same this year as well. Sorry you’re caught up in that.

We’re by no means struggling relative to what many are going through right now, but we definitely already lost multiple safety-nets in a very brief amount of time under Trump’s 2nd term.

“Ever Tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” - Samuel Beckett

Same reason they’re obsessed with carnivore diet. It’s about identity projection, macho manosphere bullshit, spun up by a very high amount of money injected by corporate propaganda.

Edit: For disclosure, it’s worth noting that both users Jet and Xep below (who happen to have replied to my comment within minutes of each other, raising suspicion or brigading or just being the same user) are heavy moderators of Carnivore diet communities. So like their diet, take with a massive grain of of salt arguments made from bias-confirming zealotry versus objective evidence.

Same reason nazis put socialist in name but promptly killed off socialists and trade unions.

“okay so this is all the classified data Tulsi and I have scraped. Also, what’s the false flag plan?”

By all means then, head to Russia and fight the good fight then, buddy!

Lead by example. Prove me wrong.

How do you believe this is the Prisoner’s Dilemma?

I think 99.9% would make the same choice.

Because she was a hostage. It’s akin to human trafficking with threats backing this up.

My most common are also my greatest.

Fear of death of my parents.

The risk of harm to my kids.

Just a million? Pay off remaining debts and put the rest toward buying land to retire on.

Let’s play a hypothetical game:

• You get a wooden broomstick with paint on it, and I get a paintball gun.

• Let’s see how many people we can mark with paint before unarmed people take us down in the exact same amount of time.

There’s something called lethal effectiveness. But if you disagree, then I guess we should inform our military that knives would be a perfectly effective substitute over rifles and save taxpayers greats amount of money.

Put another way: This actually proves targeting certain kinds of weapons IS effective, because they substituted for a lesser-effective weapon. If the person had a rifle like Holmes or Lanza or the countless others with many magazines or drums of ammunition, these people wouldn’t be “injured”; many would be dead. Just like the recent Idaho shooting.

In that instance, the lunatic walks up to a guy’s window with a handgun and shoots him point-blank through his window. Can’t do that with a sword so easily, can you? His locked door and window glass would’ve sufficiently protected him.

We need to identify and intervene before any attack happens.

We can, and should, do both simultaneously.

Don’t do welding, or pipe fitting. Speaking from the counsel of family whose profession was this (and they were one of the best, truly). In their own words they’d never advise anyone to go into that these days.

To do things over, as much as they loved it, they said they’d probably join the sparkies. Electrician or lineman.

Meanwhile hvac trade is a wash with really terrible people, the most conservative trade, low union, and highly variable in competency.

It’s not, “No (such thing as) stupid questions”; it’s “no stupid questions!”

/s

Yeah I think my RO membrane probably isn’t a top quality one, as it has a rated TDS rejection rate of 97%, so absent of the mineral-adder, that probably tracks. I think the adder does throw about 20-30ppm back in and evens out the pH.

Get an under-sink RO system. 6 stage is the sweet spot imo.

Water went from 750 TDS to 40, and that’s with minerals readded with a mineral adding filter. Tastes as good or better than bottled water to me.

If you have hard water, it’s true that water softeners can help with other issues in the house (scaling of faucets, dishwasher cleaning I effectively), and possibly if your family has skin issues from showering in it. I thought about it but for simplicity, we’re foregoing for now.

Time, money, and land ideally haha, but mostly the latter two. I have such big dreams that are closer to something of an EcoVillage. On a smaller scale, I just have fun with it and am slowly scaling up my yields with no illusions that I’ll be able to eliminate our grocery bills anytime soon.

Hey nice! This is kind of a dream for me. For my small plot I’ve gotten a good hang of the basics, and very good at composting. My main goal is a sustainable garden whose fertilizer comes from within. Phosphorus is the biggest challenge to that, imo.

That said, Jerusalem artichokes are a big winner, alongside soy beans, kale (hardy as hell), and beets (also hardy), followed next by carrots, onions, tomatoes (increasingly picky in my experience). Obviously there are a ton of others including herbs, but I love growing these.

Haven’t kept up, does Mark have a young child or something?

The pro-ruzzian propaganda is dialed up big time lately.

It correlates positively with just how POUNDED ruzzia is getting, what with the multiple massive wild berry warehouses targeted and their refineries on fire lol