Craig Weiser

Winter is a time for solitude and reflection.

Even if AI/robots didn’t exist, the current standard of going to college for a wage so you remain in debt for the rest of your life makes no sense.  Perhaps still viable for those who have a natural talent better than most.  But for the rest of us, the very concept of giving up our time for money to service a lifelong debt in the suburbs must be reevaluated.  So young people logically seek other options: can you live in poverty skillfully?  Can you have sufficient shelter and community with minimal dependency on the currency?  Has the definition of “work” always been sacrificing your time for money?  Now here comes AI and fine labor robotics to exasperate the whole thing!  

There is a sweet spot in the size of a community.  When it's too small it blows up.  When it's too big it's just unmanageable.  There are numerous religious communities, but only a handful of secular communities survived since the 1960's-70s --One success story is Twin Oaks.  You might look into it for its governance and size.  It has maintained 80-100 people and has lasted half a century.  For religious communities, the Hutterites have a member size of 65-140 people.  So that's a sweet spot in size of adults you could begin with.

Today is a wonderful time of opportunity because the youngins are questioning everything and seeking alternatives, not by choice, but because the traditional ways of having careers and families are comical and economically ridiculous.  You could find other like-minded families to build community of 100 adults and follow the Twin Oaks governance structure.  i'm not familiar with governance of the religious intentional communities but I would only focus on the ones that have been around for a long time.

#2 implies #1.  #3 yes, but #4 isn't important.  it's basically enough land to make food/water/shelter to keep you alive and well enough.  Beyond that is mere luxury.

Seems like this is forgotten on the internet.  

My property got hit in a big fire.  Lots of dead standing oaks to deal with.  The tree cutters quadrupled their prices so I'm stuck with the dangerous task myself.  Graduating from YouTube University, I managed to cut down a number of trees, but there are many so contorted and known to have rot inside causing unpredictable falls.   In these situations, I wonder if there is another way.  Chaining/winching the tree in the direction of the fall is essential but perhaps use heavy equipment to add force, to flush out any weirdness?  So make the wedge, then do the big pull.  If the tree resists, go back and do the cut.

This is a great time to use "AI" now.  It's a leap forward in efficiency at disseminating the best existing information to your specific situation.  It's a great time now since censorship is minimal because there is competition to control it and censorship interferes with AI's ability to learn from human behavior.

You need a a well insulated section of your smoke stack to raise the temperature high enough to burn the smoke.  Perhaps you can do this in the first 90 bend and horizontal run.  Not sure how long this section should be but that's important.

It's really about friendly neighbors.  As long as you're outside the city limits and you don't live in a county corrupted by large cities and the slickers who live there, you should find plenty of rural areas with like-minded people and counties that don't look for trouble, even if they have a lot of stuff on the books ---unless someone complains.  So understanding your neighbors in sight of your land is key and find out during Escrow.  In my case, I found the neighbors to be cool so I purchased the land and moved in with my RV.  But no one could see my RV.  So to be sure, before spending any serious money developing the land,  I built the ugliest greenhouse in another location everyone in the valley could see.  No complaints.

Here in CA I found that it's easier to fight fires than nature.  If I did what the firefighters tell me to do, I would have no time to do anything else in the growing season.  Cut the grass when it's green, they say, so every invasive deep rooted weed takes over later in the Summer, surviving well into the Winter.  And if you accidentally start a fire cutting that stuff, they'll arrest you.  No thanks.  I have water tanks and sprinklers to douse the structures in case any fire comes my way.