Ed Dunder

Paul mentioned Gert in his recent 45 low tech bricks live webinar (which was fantastic BTW). I believe the context was a question about why people don't want to be Gert (https://permies.com/t/gert). That got me thinking that the reason Gert seems strange to many is because it requires a paradigm shift about what wealth is and how to "weight" different forms of wealth.

Most simply trade their time/effort at a workie job for cash. So to most, wealth is cash. But Gert gets that wealth has more dimensions. I'd agree with Dr. Chris Martenson (Prosper!: How to Prepare for the Future and Create a World Worth Inheriting) that there are 8 forms of capitol: living, financial, material, social, spiritual, intellectual, experiential, and cultural. What makes Gert different is that she sees wealth across more/different dimensions and rank orders them differently.

People hate chaos. Usually takes "uncomfortable wrongness" to force us to change. That adjustment reaction under uncertainty drove a bump in permaculture interest during Covid. As we return to "normal" that bump is beginning to flatten. People are returning to old paradigms. I've heard folks at permies talk about that "bump" and ask what to do about it. https://permies.com/wiki/237906/Podcast-Year-Thought-Experiment

Here's what I propose.

First, recognize that the "green" message will only reach so far. Given the number of years and large amount of resources spent branding and rebranding climate alarmism in the last decades, whatever crowd was going to be reached by that message has been saturated.

Second, realize that it takes a paradigm shift to how we understand wealth. That shift will come with some combination of "push" and "pull." The push could include climate conversations but more likely will include different messaging. For example, permaculture offers some pretty fantastic promise; of resilience against uncertainty, to need less cash and have more time, to restore the "salt of life" to a bland culture, to offer communities to profoundly lonely people... If we get the messaging of permaculture right, if we tug the right threads, we can show already "hungry" people that permaculture "tastes" good.

And lots of good work has been done here. Paul's work on permaculture Thorns is a fantastic exploration of communities. Many permaculture videos tap into a richness to life that I found personally compelling. In a very uncertain world, entire communities have been created around resilience.

Permies as a site is already helping people transition their thinking. It has is allowed people to meet in that adjustment reaction journey. Every post, every piece of knowledge, every time we hear of other people valuing different forms of wealth and weighting them differently; that nudges us down that path. Paul talks about levels of crazy. Well, we're all being slowly "ratcheted" down permaculture crazy: but it takes time. That's key. That transition into thinking differently and then living differently takes many years. Partly because the reaction itself takes time. Partly because there is a learning curve to every subject where permaculture can be applied.

My wife and I bought land, convinced both sets of parents to by land next door (the grandkids helped) and slowly, they're shifting paradigms. It's been a 4 year journey turning those battleships. I'm now finding myself envying folks from different time periods, even the ones without decent plumbing and electricity. Their lives were their own, all their labor was theirs, they were resilient, and they have more salt in life... Is convenience really a good metric? "Convenience" at what cost?

I'd encourage the folks running permies, the folks at Wheaton Labs; be encouraged. You've set out on a long game and it's working. For those of us that "get it" it's dead obvious that Gert is incredibly more wealthy (and healthy) than Joe Stockbroker.

If you want to reach more folks about living better, remember why people want to be Joe Stockbroker in the first place. They value the security, status, the optics of having money, cars, comfort... But this generation knows that's a lie. They've been lied to that social security will be there for them. Pensions are a joke. Food is fake. People are sick. Life is bland. They are lonely. Unfulfilled. Dependent. Vulnerable. And in many aspects, poor.

Permaculture isn't everything, but when we expand how we understand wealth and our rank ordering of its forms, permaculture steps forward to show what that life can look like. I think that's compelling. What does that mean?

More focus on regional and local communities. Help folks organize RMH jamborees in their areas, in their homes.

Consider creating a certifying body so folks can contract with them to build things they don't feel confident to build (and to give credibility to regulators...)

Less focus on permaculture experts, more focus on the transferable knowledge they provide.

Less focus on convincing data-oriented folks with metrics; more focus on compelling stories (e.g., day in the life of a RMH...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZYqtsH-0Cw).

Less focus on perfect implementations and ideal solutions. More focus on the continuum and natural progression: encourage folks to take the next step.

Less focus on stuff just at the lab; more focus on collaborating with communities that have overlap: bitcoiners, Peak Prosperity, Neil McCoy Ward, (for example).

Does that make business sense? Good question. I could see how doing less at the lab (etc) could seem risky. But what if you had a smaller piece of a way bigger pie... with your fingers into other pies... In the end, I think that's more pie. And we all know how much Paul likes pie...

Paul is asking the question everyone asks about work that is meaningful to them: essentially, will the work go on without him (https://permies.com/wiki/237906/Podcast-Year-Thought-Experiment). If "the work" is a compelling ethos and not a collection of solutions, then I think the answer is "yes." Paul has done a fantastic job of giving the world "bricks." The mortar is story. It's connecting those bricks to people in ways that are compelling. (My analogy only works if we ignore dry stacking for a moment.) Something about Paul is compelling. He pulled us in and together asking "what's possible?" and "can we make this better?" But we've got pretty good answers to these questions now.

The question that remains: are these bricks compelling? I think it is compelling, if we give people more "handles" to grab; handles that move them. I think that's the move. That's how the wave continues to build. That's how Paul can "exit" and see the momentum continue forward. I think the move is to change minds about wealth and time preference by showing them what life can look like and that it's being done by people just like them. Permies is doing that. I'd say, double down in that direction.

You've already got some good ideas here. The big issue seems to be the mass-iveness of the mass it self. Some ideas for that:

* Just do a rocket heater. Do everything you can to reflect that heat into the space to warm up the objects in the space.

* Of course, pennies of insulation is worth a pounds of mass... But you're in a buss... I don't know, is it possible to blow in insulation between panels of vehicles to up the R factor? Do people do that? It would making chasing wires a painus in the future, but it would make it warmer... Also, if my science is right (and I haven't checked with Fauchi, so I don't know for sure) radiant heat is just light... IR I believe...  I think that reflects off glass and stays in the rig... the idea here is to think about what wavelengths are leaving the bus (is it buss or bus... my grammar may be wrong but I think my science is right). So consider your three types of heat transfer - Conduction, Convection, Radiation, figure out which is most important, then optimize trade-offs. Maybe simply having roll-down window shades would dramatically retain more radiant heat and help to reduce convection over the windows... Maybe you're willing to do flip down insulated flaps... maybe a blanket over windows...

* If the mass has gotta be inside the buss...  Maybe you make the mass a large amount of water. OBVIOUSLY, you will do your due diligence and put in check valves... let's assume you're not an idiot and the system is safe... (and as soon as i post this, people who know nothing about steam will assume that any amount of warm water will explode... brace for comments...) Hear me out. Water would have lots of advantages. It means the mass can be anywhere, and any shape if you can safely move the water around. So that could be an insulated hot pipe that goes under the seats to reservoir(s)... You can drain it and drive away, there goes the mass part. Would be pretty cool to hook up a solar hot water heater to the same volume of water... could warm you a little for free in the sunny hours, taking in more heat when the RMH is on... maybe even use the hot water for practical things, like warm showers or washing dishes... Maybe you don't design the water part yourself... there's plenty of information out there, even finished boilers that can be obtained, with all the expertise and safeties that go with them. If you go with water, make sure you know how full it is before every use: you don't want super-heated steam finding holes into your small living space... Everyone's going to freak out at this suggestion to use water, but we've been using steam power for centuries. Even nuclear is a fancy way to make water hot. You're not even after steam you just want warm... So oversize...

* If you're not moving around a lot, modular mass might be enough. Consider bricks, pavers... any mass you can easily handle. The less expensive the better, maybe even expendable if you move on. Gravel may work, but it's less dense and has a lottttt of air pockets.... Also very hard to move around, makes a mess... not ideal. Consider staggering flat pavers to reduce the airflow between the pavers. The flatter the faces the better: less air = less air movement. Maybe you have some pieces that fit snugly over the pipe, to translate pipe shape into the standard paver size you have. Cob seems ideal... other stuff may work. Consult the oracle RMH builder's guide on permies... Yeah, so cobb (whatever) around your pipeing zones that you want to pull off heat, that should fill whatever awkward space allows you to then stack close bricks/pavers... (That would reduce the permanent mass, and make most of it modular.)

Whatever you do, be sure you're maintaining clean air in the small space. Manage fire exhaust AND make sure the fire isn't depleting all your O2. Redundant audible alarms should do the trick, if placed at the right locations/elevations. A heat exchanger wouldn't be a bad idea, little counter productive, but a good stupid-simple safeguard to make sure you'll always have another lung-full of O2. In a small space with a fire, I'd give my left lung to KNOW that my right lung would always have O2... of course, you could always draw outside air for the combustion, and that would help with the O2, but you'd have to trust your exhaust is sealed to protect from gas buildup. So outside air and sensors for carbon monoxide etc.

I heard it's not worth the squeeze... like the boil off is 80 to 1... but maybe there's where I went wrong... "I heard..."

Looking forward to seeing if this is viable!

I live in the PNW, and full disclosure, all I have are chickens and two Nigerian Dwarf goats... so I'm no expert. But I can point you to some experts. Sepp Holzer is your man. This thread in Permies is a good start. The idea is that animals can self medicate and aren't quite a dumb as we think. https://permies.com/t/1294/animal-care/Sepp-Holzer-animal-husbandry

My experience with Goats seems to corroborate this. We let them browse whatever they want, although we don't give them access to things we aren't willing to destroy. (Goats LOVE cambium, that bottom layer of tree bark has a higher amount of sugars and goats will gird trees and kill them. I'm pretty sure they leave evergreens alone, but leafy trees are gonners. Sepp recommends a bone paste reduction that smells like death, apparently the goats leave that smell alone. I haven't tried it yet. But ask any butcher for extra bones and you'll get a garbage can full if you want em. (Actually, that's a "cheat code" for life... you could darn near live on bone broth...)

https://permies.com/t/71424/Sepp-Holzer-bone-salve-sauce

I would add a consideration, that where heavy breeding has been done, I think that animals are dumber. We're optimizing for something, something else has to give. Plus, where animals are not getting taught by their parents I think they might also be dumber. All my theory and I'm looking to prove/disprove that with time.

Where I am West of the Cascades, we have Tansy and Bleeding Hearts. My aunt freaks out about Bleeding Hearts. She's even insisted Bleeding Hearts and Foxglove must be harvested with gloved hands or "they'll stop your ticker!" But I've eaten Bracken fern heads. We have 5 fer varieties, and I believe 4 are edible (do your research). Elderberry is edible, albeit very very bitter, which is why every book insists they be boiled. (Do your own research) Everyone seems to freak out when Tansy is in their yard or pasture because animals could eat it and die an instant and painful death! I find lots of these kinds of concerns to be founded, albeit greatly embellished due to inexperience. The worst part is, there's a confirmation bias when people are overly careful. And everyone wants to hang their hat on one singular reason why things work or don't.

But I've never heard of a live animal eating live toxic things of their own volition. What I have heard, is if toxic things get harvested and dried out (e.g., tansy), and if that is fed (e.g., bails/flakes) to animals then they can't smell it like they normally would and are then liable to eat it unknowingly, then get sick/die. So, if you're buying your winter bails, you're probably fine. If you're bailing your own, be more careful. If you're offering your animals plants that are alive and growing in soil, they're probably ok. I'd even think that if you pull Tansy and leave it in the pasture to rot, they're not going to eat it. We also have bleeding hearts in our goat pen and they seem to be fine. Maybe they are fine or they are getting a little high now and again...

Anyway, like with selective breeding or pulling young away from their parents... whenever we break a natural cycle there's going to be some fallout. In this case, it seems we have to do the "smelling" for them if we feed them dried grass. (In the NW, what grass survives dry into winter... that's not normal...).

For stuff like this I'd consider a more "load, shoot, aim" approach. Do a little research, consider what the actual downside is, and then go for it. I've learned a bunch more from iterating through change than from what my neighbors think. In permaculture we're trying to optimize, or freeze, a system in its most desirable state. In some ways that's done through natural means, but it can have unnatural implications... find those and most of your risks are usually related. (E.g., We plant a garden, maximize for production, that's an unnatural concentration of energy for pests, pests come, we optimize for predators of pests... etc...)

I'm sure someone will reply to this and say I'm an idiot because their friend's horse... yadda yadda... I'm sure that's happened. But consider that later generations of plants will optimize their genetic material (yes, some genes are not immutable but can be switched on/off in offspring). The longer a plant is in an area the more suited it is for that area. Suppose we gather our own seed, but we also ensured the 100% survival rates for all the starts... What would happen? Would the later generations have the same benefit from these changed genes? I'd think they wouldn't. So yeah, folks can show pictures of what happens to animals who's mothers ate something toxic. In the wild, that would be self selection... But we're optimizing for 100% survival rates, regardless of intelligence or anything else... genes be damned... Consider how the system is getting disrupted where we optimize, and figure out what the fallout will be... Our breeding practices usually doesn't much care if animals can taste, smell, be smart... they want them to not die, sleep in filth, and eat this corn. Animals like that let out to pasture with toxic things are going to have a debt of selection to pay...

That said, consider different plants may change how the milk tastes, maybe... I don't have milking goats, maybe someone else can talk about that.

Your animals. Your risk. You weigh your risks. All I know is my goats are doing fine. So the tl;dr: Everything is toxic, if you consume enough of it. Consider favoring heirloom breeds. What can my goats eat? Almost anything that is currently alive, in whatever quantity they choose. If you starve them or they eat everything else in the area, Tansy probably looks pretty yummie... Have lots of healthy growing things, notice what they eat most of, move them around from time to time and give them more of what they want... except grains. Goats will convince you they will DIE without their grains. Grains are crack for goats... We only use them to get them to lap up their minerals.

During some of our very smoky NW fire seasons, i've had very good success with blue Zep shop towels. I created a layer of blue shop towels on the back of a box fan. Then I created a "manifold" of sorts and sealed the edges. The fan blows in to create positive air pressure (which helps prevent air from getting in other places. Since the air coming in is going through the shop towels the air is filtered somewhat. I remember reading somewhere that zep towels actually filter down to 1-3 microns, which is more than plenty to catch smoke particulate. Anyhow, worked for my use case.

The issue with pleats is about surface area. 1) it provides higher flow for a given cross section, and 2) the filter doesn't need cleaning/replacement as often since there's more filter for the area. This is why higher-end car air filters are massive with many pleats so the car gets all the O2 it needs to combust well, even at higher RPMs.

There's lots of research done on Zep towels, and other filter media, relating to DIY masks during C-19. Consider that some otherwise unacceptable filter media (fabrics) may become viable if sprayed with a sticky substance (reduces the size of filtered particulate) or if it can remain wet. In fact, where electricity is an acceptable input, a small water pump circulating water over the media may be self cleaning and allow the use of cheaper media. That being said, it would increase the humidity of the space. But if that's a desirable bi-product, then maybe an interesting option. Swamp cooler/filter.

r ranson wrote:

r ranson wrote:We could set up a private mastermind group here on permies if there's enough interest.  

I'm thinking a private forum and maybe a weekly half-hour zoom?  

Makes sense. Something is resonating with you... I'd be willing to jump on a call with you to better understand what you find compelling. With that we may find it much easier to articulate a vision and drum up support (both from stakeholders and from folks who might want to help).

Rebekah Harmon wrote:

Ed Dunder wrote:Of course, gotta be where the eyes are. But....  I would love to see more content creators ditching YouTube... or at least, posting on multiple streaming sites so that people enjoying that Google-free life can also join in.

What other platform would you use, Ed?

For me, anything really. Odysee seems to be good, Rumble is good. There's a dozen more options and I'd rather be on any one of them than YouTube...

And, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to host permies videos on permies... sure there'd be an added cost to host, but there's added revenue/traffic opportunities as well. For most, the original selling point for starting on YouTube was zero cost to post/host, which was important due to no guaranteed traffic/revenue as a startup. For permies, with such a following, that might not be true anymore. Even just add some poster adds with referral discounts to ebooks and items for sale on permies, or promote awesome products you like. Seems like a win-win. I'd like that.

You know, some YouTubeies leave a little premium content for their own website. YouTube videos could entice folks to come see the full video (etc) at permies. Sure, even if it took 1-2 more folks to launch something like that there's a whole community of professionals on permies who would love to contribute with a side gig like that. Shoot, even just start with a few partner videos form other permascultureists who are more heavy into the video space. (Rob Avis from Verge maybe? or a dozen others I'm sure permies knows by name...) So it may be that for the shared audience/collaboration, other videographer/permaculterurists would just be willing to do all the video stuff...  or help significantly with the architecture to launch. Maybe crowd source short video tip submissions... Slap a pie bounty on video content submissions...

I think this gets even easier with permies values. Since the goal isn't to make a ton of money, go public, and sell to Google... That just leaves questions like "Can we reach more people by doubling down on multiple video platforms?" Can we use those videos to drive engagement at permies?" That's an obvious yes. "Can we do it and stay solvent, without compromising our values?" I'd think that's a yes as well, but it may take a little teasing out to develop. You could throw a rock and find people who'd want to help with that.

To Paul's point (paraphrased) "Step 1: make it s#itty. Step 2: make it less s#itty..." Maybe now is a good time to consider doing more/better videos...

Of course, gotta be where the eyes are. But....  I would love to see more content creators ditching YouTube... or at least, posting on multiple streaming sites so that people enjoying that Google-free life can also join in.

In the wild, goats would be running around on rocks and stuff. That would wear down their hooves. Not too much of that in a pasture... so people have to trim them manually, which sucks.

So why not a goat emery board like the one for my fingernails? My first attempts at teaching goats to use my emery board were failures. Instead of teaching the goats to hold an emery board, I decided to leverage things they already do. So I consulted my list of things goats like to do.

Things goats like to do:
- Eat everything
- Climb everything
- Ignore everything else

So I ordered some non-slip grip tape, the kind for outdoor stairways. I sanded down a piece of plywood, dusted it off, and stuck on the grip strips. Now the goats have to climb it to get to their favorite spot. What I wanted was just a little "slide." Not too much, but not none. By playing with the angle, I arrived at what you see.

But, they got good at bouncing off the board, rather than climbing slowing. So I put a palate at the bottom. Goats are pretty sure-footed, so it's not a danger to them. It simply makes them slow when going up and down, and that gets me a little slide when they do.

Their feet are more healthy and much tougher. I still check them often, but I haven't had to trim more often then every 8 weeks. The photo of their hoof is after 6 weeks. An improvement would be a kind of edge around the plywood to prevent the edges from peeling up. Still, I'd say it will last about 5 years. I've had it for about 8 months now.

Their names are Handsome and Beautiful, so when my wife walks down to them she calls out "Hey Handsome, Hey Beautiful." Never gets old.