Small reddit pages are the best, but yeah front page reddit seems like a lot of political/corporate content

10 goblins gobbling

It depends on what you want. I’ll look on kiwix right now.

All of it with pictures is 102 Gigs

The top 100 articles are 368 MB

Yeah that feeling hit me hard when I was playing with web SDRs. To keep it simple and not boring people can set up an antenna, hook it to a computer and you can go to their website to remotely listen to anything the antenna can hear. A univeristy in the Netherlands has one set up. You can hear regular radio, cell tower data, morse code, you name it.

So I was able to listen to a Cuban propaganda broadcast, that somehow skipped between the ocean and atmosphere just right to get picked up by that antenna, turning into digital data sent through their website, going through cables under the ocean to my isp, through wifi, to me in near real time. Bonkers.

OpenStreetMap and their editors are great and I use them a lot, but if you really want to have great flexibility with your map design QGIS is Open Source

Here’s a video on how to use it

You can use CalTopo’s print pdf to print that OSM data too

I don’t have a 3D printer but if I did I would try to keep it in a basement or garage, or at least keep a window open

China’s entire history is coming together and breaking apart over and over. Australia has a lot of land but the vast majority is unpopulated.

I think the difference is size. The US has states the size of European countries. Getting a country/state to pull together is a lot easier than the whole EU/US because the culture and goals are similar. Right now the Carolinas are pulling together to deal with flooding and Florida is dealing with a rocking hurricane season.

But I agree with another comment that the real divides would be city vs rural.

Cities tend to think that government is the main answer to problems since their lives are surrounded by roads and buildings and public transport and people have a lot less of their own to work with. You can’t easily have a garden in an apartment for example.

Rural doesn’t have as much government influence since so much focus is spent on the cities. Power outages last longer, stores are few and far between, side roads are often an afterthought and police and fire are 10 min away if you’re lucky. So people use the land and neighbors and have the ability to be mostly self reliant.

So you can see where the divides come from on a lot of subjects

Watching “The Fog” (1980) for the first time!

The Rand corporation made a paper on what they call the “neomedieval era”. They get paid to research and write a bunch of analytical stuff for the US Govt and other big picture people.

The idea is that the last 200 years has been an anomaly. Big central governments, industry, media etc. They make the case that a shift has started since about 2000. We are gradually sliding back to how things have worked for most of human history, decentralized societies, greater divides between rich and poor and governments trying their best to get by. Less chance of massive conventional world wars and more chance of messy regional ones (Syria, Lebanon etc). It’s an interesting read. So no it’s not just you!

Anyway what we should all try to do is focus on what you can locally. Make friends, build skills and do stuff with them. Be involved and help each other. Yes there are always bigger fish to take things but building up is better than being helpless in difficult situations. It can be fun AND fufill a bigger purpose. No need for constant doom and gloom to do better.

If I can get to a level my grandparents were with gardening, canning, sewing, diy repairs etc I’d be pretty well set. Back then it was a norm, but we offloaded those skills on companies and governments. Now it could be seen as homesteading or prepping but in their time it was common sense for a society that made it through world wars and the depression.

The best way to feel better isn’t by trying to cheer myself up but just exist in the current emotion and go on it’s way.

I’ll usually turn in for the night early, listen to some music by myself and rest until I want to actually sleep.

I meant that keeping it a secret isn’t a real option.

But yeah it’s nice to see people encouraged to do in house innovation! The military can have a ton of red tape and people that would rather have you embrace the suck than reduce the suck because it’s less work (for them). Imagine the BMV running everything and you get the idea lol

Facts

It’s all fun and games until quality assurance finds out you’re using an unauthorized and unaccounted for tool on a fighter flightline

The link worked for me the first time but only once

It can be hard to find fediverse instances and content inside of them. They are working to make things easier to search for on Mastadon. With a little work it could be used with (and between) many things on the fediverse!

People think that govt developed = bad. It’s a consideration for sure but if anything govt developed is so hopelessly and inherently compromised then many of the measures discussed here are useless for privacy already because they almost all run through internet, a govt created system. Even TOR. But yet here we are anyway because they are still useful systems.

Governments pour tons of time money and effort into secure communication, and not for profit, and we can still take advantage of that advancement with some caution.

Wait until they find out who started the internet. Or who runs GPS satellites

Going to rent some kayaks for a few hours and paddle around