11 ms·

Off the Grid

244 points by yunruse 5y ago

valbaca 5y ago
> urine, which is sterile NO. IT IS NOT. Urine is not sterile and it's such an annoying, pervasive myth. It contains bacteria and under no definition is it sterile.
- ketanmaheshwari 5y ago
  Could you share some references for your claim. I have always heard, read and understood that urine is sterile.
  - parrellel 5y ago
    Someone discovered that there are extremophiles in the urinary tract. They... aren't actually a threat because extremophiles.
  - entropie 5y ago
    This is probably one of the worst "urban" legends that exist. https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/urine-not-sterile-and-neither-rest-you https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/urine-not-ster... Its literaly a 5 second google search.
  - solididiot 5y ago
    If it where sterile then we wouldn't test it in medical tests.
    - sophacles 5y ago
      Whether or not it's sterile seems to me a completely independent variable from whether or not it's useful to test. Seeing as how it's not completely water, but rather water with various things dissolved in it, the relative levels of those dissolved compounds would something that could be worth knowing.
- vitiral 5y ago
  Urine is not sterile. Neither is blood, tears, ocean water, well water, or anything that isn't 5% bleach or similar. Still no need to get angry about peeing in the ocean off of a boat.
- flobosg 5y ago
  It’s already corrected in the article: > urine, which is somewhat sterile
cmason 5y ago
There's something truly magical to me about a self-sufficient "world" you can understand and hold in your head and hand. Where does my water come from? It comes from the rain and these tanks. Where is the power generated? On those solar panels and these batteries. I know the limits of this world; I work with them, not in spite of them. Having ocean sailed a tiny bit myself, I have such respect for the hundred rabbits crew. Not all of the choices they made are ones I would, but they're respectable and defensible. Moreover, they're explained plainly without judgement: these are their choices and are offered only in the hope they will be useful. And with a playful and vivid tone that is a joy to read. I dream of a life like this and feel privileged to be able to share in theirs vicariously.
- nicbou 5y ago
  It gives you a mix of fear and confidence. Your little setup is all there, unaffected by greater forces outside your front gate. The cost of energy won't change and your money isn't tied in a market or another. Like you said, it's all right there with you. On the other hand, you're the point of failure for this machine. You are responsible for it, and you have to keep it running. You can't get sick or tired because you're not part of a system large enough to cut you some slack. A common theme in stories about self sufficiency is something breaking and the hardships that ensue from not having anyone to help.
- it_does_follow 5y ago
  > these tanks > those solar panels > these batteries The problem with these "self-sufficient" narratives is they're always tethered to industrial society. Having the limit of your understanding be a "solar panel" is no different than it being a wall socket. The "world" itself here, the boat in this case, is manufactured in a factory. That's not to say I don't also find this stuff interesting, but don't confuse being able to hold your breath a long time for having gills. I find free diving fascinating, but there is no need in that community to claim that they have found a way of living free from the constraints of air breathing.
  - 16012022 5y ago
    As far as I know, "industrial society" will still last for another centuries so there's no "problem to this narrative" as you say. It's like saying "the problem with life on Earth is that it depends on the sun which will explode some time in the future"
DoreenMichele 5y ago
For each 100 people telling us to "just install more solar panels", only 1 person will consider ways to reduce power usage. Instead of scaling our battery banks to our needs, we chose to adapt our needs to the available space for batteries and surface for panels. The world could stand to learn to apply such habits and mental models more generally.
- sexy_seedbox 5y ago
  You mean the western world? The rest of the planet live with/on very little.
  - y4mi 5y ago
    Maybe he should've said the developed world. the west is definitely wrong however, as there are wealthy nations all over the world
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
      I said exactly what I meant. I would like to see a trend towards passive solar design and similar principles for humans generally. All humans, even those for whom that would be a huge step up, not just those who might currently think of it as some kind of virtuous personal sacrifice. I would like to see a world where The Haves are not obscenely wasteful, The Have Nots are not screwed by a system that makes it impossible to find some means to get your needs met on a budget and the middle class is not being exterminated by our social practices, policies, etc. I'm too old to believe in faerie tale endings, so I'm not holding my breath here and waiting for anyone else to agree with me. But I'm also old enough to speak my mind anyway and say exactly what I mean rather than what I think other people will find palatable or expect based on their current mental models and world view.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Much of the world lives in poverty and then lusts after what wealthier nations have and usually tries to emulate their methods. This is about living well without living wastefully. Too much of the world believes we can either live in poverty or ruin the biosphere for future generations. If you make no effort to both live well and live within a reasonable footprint, it shouldn't be surprising when you fail to achieve both goals.
sdedovic 5y ago
Hey these are also the folks behind the Orca visual programming language/MIDI sequencer! Its a real weird and cool tool, highly recommend checking it out if you're into experimental electrical music. http://100r.co/site/orca.html http://100r.co/site/orca.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH5GaVU0ed8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH5GaVU0ed8
- suby 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing this! It's really cool
picture 5y ago
> a Macbook Pro draws 30 W when in use. If in use for 6 consecutive hours, it would draw roughly 160W per day While I do find their lifestyle fascinating, there's a nit I feel compelled to pick here. Watt is a unit of power, while watt per time is a unit of energy. If the Macbook draws 30 W and used for 6 hours, it would have consumed 180 Wh exactly. If it draws 30 W for 6 hours every day, then it would be 180 Wh per day. I have no idea how authors ended up at 160 W per day, which doesn't make sense.
- stonogo 5y ago
  Its power consumption is not static, and they got the numbers by measuring it.
  - danielheath 5y ago
    You still can't meaningfully use "Watts per day" in that context (for that matter, I struggle to imagine a scenario in which it was a meaningful unit). Given the number involved was 160, I suspect the likely unit they meant was "Watt-hours per day".
    - imachine1980_ 5y ago
      When you live in a boate who have limited energy storages
      - danielheath 5y ago
        Storage is watt-hours. Watts per day would be used to describe the rate at which your power consumption increases (eg “as winter comes on, power used heating the boat will increase 100 watts per day”).
        DarylZero 5y ago
        Watts per day could be used to describe the rate of decay of strength of a team of horses on expedition. But probably for that application you'd better use horsepower instead.
Scoundreller 5y ago
> When we have a reliable internet connection, we gather copies of all the online material we will need. We keep offline versions of entire websites, writing guides, articles and even whole sections of Wikipedia (using wget) If we find ourselves without a connection, we can still solve our problems by using our offline mirrors. Kiwix is a good solution here. There’s also “RACHEL”, which lets has massive resources that you can save offline in case of Armageddon. The latter isn’t free, but has a good list of content worth investigating. Don’t wget wikipedia. https://www.kiwix.org/en/ https://www.kiwix.org/en/ https://worldpossible.org/ https://worldpossible.org/
- joshvm 5y ago
  Kiwix is nice, I maintained the the wiki server at the South Pole last year. Very useful when internet is down. However the tools are a bit janky and difficult to customise, though they’re being updated at the moment. Odd things like you can’t sort content (if you have say 30 titles) and the built in sort order is based on a random ID string, not content title (why??). I had to write a custom single file webpage with a lot of inline JS to improve things (like sorting elements after load). I also had it pull data from the station intranet so that we could have lots of relevant info in one place, but the only way to do that was to statically generate the page and then restart the wiki server every five minutes… but in the end it's incredibly useful to have that service available and it runs on crappy hardware easily.
  - kilroy123 5y ago
    Wow that's a really cool gig. I've always wanted to do a summer down there but as a software engineer I doubt there's much need for me. (I have visited the continent as a tourist) What is your official job title down there?
    - joshvm 5y ago
      I was a winterover for IceCube 2020-21. Mostly sysadmin type work, and some hardware maintenance in the field. https://icecube.wisc.edu/category/news/life-at-the-pole/ https://icecube.wisc.edu/category/news/life-at-the-pole/
Havoc 5y ago
Can’t picture myself living like this. Imagine range anxiety of a car except with water…no thanks. To each their own I guess I could do living in a remote location though. Little bit more predictable
- Seirdy 5y ago
  Many would argue that this mentality of scarcity is necessary to ensure that our ecological footprint is negligible.
- Danborg 5y ago
  I agree with your take. I felt the same way while reading this.
_bfhp 5y ago
When I was younger it was still fashionable to promote Slacktivism. I remember being a teenager buying a book of 101 things you can do to be More Green. But now I think it's become more and more implied. Between this and the first half I've read of Braiding Sweetgrass, I'm getting seriously irked by this massive focus on individual, very isolated choices as proxies for the world at large. It's fine for people to promote "old ways" of living but to cast it as exactly what we need for "the ecological society we’re trying to build" feels so wrong to me. We need organizers, movement leaders, direct actions, we need to shake the Democratic Party out of corruption and uselessness. It's great to have a lifestyle--I agree with most of the values described in this post--but merely living it yourself does nothing for the human world or "ecology." A single animal rights activist stealing a chicken and getting flamboyantly arrested probably does more for climate change than this crew's work for their entire lives, because she moves the world a tiny bit closer toward giving up factory farming.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nice_byte 5y ago
  the people behind this project are Canadian.
- kamranjon 5y ago
  I could not disagree more. I am inspired by people who live their principles and can smell a virtue signaling attention magnet from a mile away. I don’t think anyone has any responsibility to change the world, if people would actually stop trying so hard we might actually get somewhere. A couple who built a knowledge compendium on how they live and some fun games and software they wanted to share with the world is fine by me.
julianeon 5y ago
On the one hand, I really like their principles and their commitment to art for art's sake, in their games. On the other hand, I owned one of their games (Donsol), which used to work just fine. Then they removed it and basically reimplemented it in their new unique format, which I couldn't get to work. So it was frustrating to have a game I was looking forward to playing, having it at one time (it worked fine), and now not having it anymore, when my old computer died and I tried to download the thing I'd bought before once more.
- entaloneralie 5y ago
  Need a hand getting Donsol running? Famicom(NES) or Uxn version?
- tdjsnelling 5y ago
  I built a web version of Donsol for the same reason. It's a PWA so you can also install it on your device and play offline. https://donsol.tdjs.tech/ https://donsol.tdjs.tech/
elihu 5y ago
I like the Ergo Proxy references.
betwixthewires 5y ago
The two that run this site are fantastic graphical artists and designers as well. Ran into them at merveilles.town and checked out this site years ago. I'm not sure if they're still active there.
- sprkwd 5y ago
  They are still active there.
mikeytown2 5y ago
Pretty sweet setup there. I'd personally always opt for more power. Could replace LPG with induction cooktops in theory; but I am not in a boat. Salt water is very hard on almost everything so it sounds like they have a system figured out. Living off grid, on land is something I've been looking into. Power is everything. The more you have, the better your comfort is. Ideal build: ICF foundation/house, exterior insulation. DIY friendly horizontal geothermal for hvac and water heating, rocket mass fireplace as backup heat. Ground water well, dehumidifier backup water generation, large in ground water tanks. Solar panels everywhere, Lifepo4 batteries, in ground propane tank for backup power, extra solar power can be used for heating water; everything would be electric including cars. Greenhouse with ground to air heat exchanger pipes about 10 feet underground so the power of keeping it above freezing is just a fan. Septic drain field, if water is very scarce then grey water recycling. Anything I missed on the ultimate off grid house?
07d046 5y ago
In their "basic medicine kit": Oxycodone/acetaminophen (severe, short term pain) Paracetamol isn't normally an alternative for oxycodone. Also, if travelling internationally, I'm pretty sure there are countries that will consider oxycodone as equivalent to heroin even if you have a prescription.
madaxe_again 5y ago
I live off grid. We started with a stone hut in a deep valley without cell signal, and no infrastructure, and now we’ve all the power we can use, all the water we can use, and 140Mb/s internet. The whole “oh, we only need 3L of water per day and 500Wh is enough” lifestyle is unsustainable. I know, I’ve tried it, and I’ve seen many others go through it - you go gently mad spending your days managing your limited resources, and eventually give up. Power: we’ve 4.8kW of solar panels, a hydro generator that makes a continuous 280W through the winter months, and three small 150W nominal wind turbines, which also help in the winter. Storage is 84kWh of OPzS lead acid cells. 2x 5kW Victron multiplus for triple phase output, and their MPPTs for the various inputs. I also laid 500m of 18mm2 SWA cable from our powerhouse to the cabin we built, so we can have power here too. Stuck a 1:2 transformer at each end to get more carrying capacity. Water: there are a number of muddy, sulphurous seeps in the side of the valley. In the winter there’s water, in the summer, mud. Laid tubing with simple pre filters on the intakes down to a chain of IBCs 70m above the valley floor - 50 micron, 10 micron, 1 micron, carbon, then store in the IBCs. At each house (there’s both the mill and the cabin) I then re filter through a 1 micron sediment filter and a carbon block, as algae tend to grow in the tanks. For drinking, we have a simple reverse osmosis setup along with a UV block under each kitchen sink. As our fallback, basically for august when the river runs dry and the mud turns to dust, we’ve a submersible pump next to the hydro intake, which is a low spot in the bedrock and holds a pool of increasingly stagnant water in the summer. Still, our water treatment system makes it perfectly good for everything. Hot water, I took inspiration from someone on here, and built a pair of big damn heat exchangers - excess heat from stoves in winter, or from power in summer, gets dumped into 4000L of water in a heavily insulated bunker. I aim to keep it at 85C, as above that I risk melting things. There’s then 200m of coiled tubing in each bunker, through which flows the high pressure cold water (7bar), which comes out somewhere around 40-60C, depending on the season Sewerage, we are using above ground vermi composting tanks built from IBCs (IBCs are dead handy, very cheap used) - works a charm, no smells or anything. Grey water just goes to a soakaway. Internet: I’ve talked about this here before. Solar powered mast atop the valley with an atheros w/ openwrt, LTE with an LPDA antenna as our nearest cell mast is line of sight from there but 20km away, Wi-Fi relay using yagis to each point of consumption, and then APs dotted around so we have coverage over our few sq km. Heat in both houses is from a log stove. We’ve 11ha of forest, which we are clearing the dead but still standing trees (ash, oak) from, both for the sake of the forest and for the sake of us not freezing in the winter. We’re insulated up to the gunwales in the cabin, and the mill has a huge thermal mass. We have a dishwasher, a washing machine, home theatre with surround (and oh boy you can crank it when your nearest neighbour is 20km away), all the modern conveniences. Sure, it all had to be carried in by hand or on the aerial cableway, as the one thing we don’t have is road access, but I’m one who’s strongly in favour of “effort now, easy later”. What else… I use an rpi running openhab to monitor and control everything, from power production and consumption to water levels and quality, to the weather. I can’t control the weather, to be clear. Other things… our chainsaws are battery powered (makita’s 36V stuff packs an amazing punch, and no two-stroke screaming in your ear), as are our brushcutters, polesaws, everything. Only thing that uses fossils is the truck, and that will change. This year I’m planning on more infrastructure - probably a small monorail, as I’ve got bored of injuring myself carrying stuff up 45 degree inclines, and a large pond up the hill, for water storage, and possibly hydro, possibly pumped. I’m also thinking about building myself a proper workshop, as at the moment I just drag equipment around the forest and cover it with tarps for the weather, which is also getting boring! Oh, and I’ve grand plans to turn our ‘88 hilux into a strange beast - remove the elderly million mile diesel, add hub motors and as many batteries as I can cram into the engine bay and under the flatbed. That’s the main thing making me want a workshop. So, anyway - my point is sustainability. I’ve invested significant time and resources here over the last two years so that our life here is a sustainable one - ecologically, sure, but also for us - it’s enough work just being here - I don’t want to have to always be worrying about resource management too, and I want to be able to still live here when I’m a feeble old dodger.
anthk 5y ago
Gopher and Gemini would be better than a site with huge png images. Also, I don't like some non commercial licenses for sw. Tildes/SDF got it better in this case.
solididiot 5y ago
>> Keeping an eye on the weather, studying charts carefully, picking good anchorages, and having a good rode and anchor was our best possible insurance, but there are dangers that are beyond anyone's control, dangers that even the most skilled sailor cannot avoid, e.g., a shipping container adrift, dead heads at night, whales, etc. dead heads at night. What is that?
- capableweb 5y ago
  > A deadhead is a log or large tree in a waterway submerged just below the surface and difficult to see. If a fiberglass boat strikes a deadhead, the boat could be damaged and even sunk. The lower unit could be ripped off causing a hole in the transom and/or render the boat inoperable. A diligent forward watch will help prevent this potential danger.
  - totony 5y ago
    How difficult would using sonar be to protect against that?
tjwds 5y ago
I highly recommend the log of 100R's relatively recent passage across the Pacific where they put these ideas to practice, Busy Doing Nothing: https://100r.co/site/busy_doing_nothing.html https://100r.co/site/busy_doing_nothing.html
justforfunhere 5y ago
My humble opinion, To everyone who has commented here and even the OP. You aren't really off the grid, imo. Because you are still connected to the internet and writing comments here or blogs. Go read Walden.

244 points by yunruse 5y ago

> urine, which is sterile NO. IT IS NOT. Urine is not sterile and it's such an annoying, pervasive myth. It contains bacteria and under no definition is it sterile.

ketanmaheshwari 5y ago
Could you share some references for your claim. I have always heard, read and understood that urine is sterile.
- parrellel 5y ago
  Someone discovered that there are extremophiles in the urinary tract. They... aren't actually a threat because extremophiles.
- entropie 5y ago
  This is probably one of the worst "urban" legends that exist. https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/urine-not-sterile-and-neither-rest-you https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/urine-not-ster... Its literaly a 5 second google search.
- solididiot 5y ago
  If it where sterile then we wouldn't test it in medical tests.
  - sophacles 5y ago
    Whether or not it's sterile seems to me a completely independent variable from whether or not it's useful to test. Seeing as how it's not completely water, but rather water with various things dissolved in it, the relative levels of those dissolved compounds would something that could be worth knowing.
vitiral 5y ago
Urine is not sterile. Neither is blood, tears, ocean water, well water, or anything that isn't 5% bleach or similar. Still no need to get angry about peeing in the ocean off of a boat.
flobosg 5y ago
It’s already corrected in the article: > urine, which is somewhat sterile

cmason 5y ago

There's something truly magical to me about a self-sufficient "world" you can understand and hold in your head and hand. Where does my water come from? It comes from the rain and these tanks. Where is the power generated? On those solar panels and these batteries. I know the limits of this world; I work with them, not in spite of them. Having ocean sailed a tiny bit myself, I have such respect for the hundred rabbits crew. Not all of the choices they made are ones I would, but they're respectable and defensible. Moreover, they're explained plainly without judgement: these are their choices and are offered only in the hope they will be useful. And with a playful and vivid tone that is a joy to read. I dream of a life like this and feel privileged to be able to share in theirs vicariously.

nicbou 5y ago
It gives you a mix of fear and confidence. Your little setup is all there, unaffected by greater forces outside your front gate. The cost of energy won't change and your money isn't tied in a market or another. Like you said, it's all right there with you. On the other hand, you're the point of failure for this machine. You are responsible for it, and you have to keep it running. You can't get sick or tired because you're not part of a system large enough to cut you some slack. A common theme in stories about self sufficiency is something breaking and the hardships that ensue from not having anyone to help.
it_does_follow 5y ago
> these tanks > those solar panels > these batteries The problem with these "self-sufficient" narratives is they're always tethered to industrial society. Having the limit of your understanding be a "solar panel" is no different than it being a wall socket. The "world" itself here, the boat in this case, is manufactured in a factory. That's not to say I don't also find this stuff interesting, but don't confuse being able to hold your breath a long time for having gills. I find free diving fascinating, but there is no need in that community to claim that they have found a way of living free from the constraints of air breathing.
- 16012022 5y ago
  As far as I know, "industrial society" will still last for another centuries so there's no "problem to this narrative" as you say. It's like saying "the problem with life on Earth is that it depends on the sun which will explode some time in the future"

DoreenMichele 5y ago

For each 100 people telling us to "just install more solar panels", only 1 person will consider ways to reduce power usage. Instead of scaling our battery banks to our needs, we chose to adapt our needs to the available space for batteries and surface for panels. The world could stand to learn to apply such habits and mental models more generally.

sexy_seedbox 5y ago
You mean the western world? The rest of the planet live with/on very little.
- y4mi 5y ago
  Maybe he should've said the developed world. the west is definitely wrong however, as there are wealthy nations all over the world
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    I said exactly what I meant. I would like to see a trend towards passive solar design and similar principles for humans generally. All humans, even those for whom that would be a huge step up, not just those who might currently think of it as some kind of virtuous personal sacrifice. I would like to see a world where The Haves are not obscenely wasteful, The Have Nots are not screwed by a system that makes it impossible to find some means to get your needs met on a budget and the middle class is not being exterminated by our social practices, policies, etc. I'm too old to believe in faerie tale endings, so I'm not holding my breath here and waiting for anyone else to agree with me. But I'm also old enough to speak my mind anyway and say exactly what I mean rather than what I think other people will find palatable or expect based on their current mental models and world view.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Much of the world lives in poverty and then lusts after what wealthier nations have and usually tries to emulate their methods. This is about living well without living wastefully. Too much of the world believes we can either live in poverty or ruin the biosphere for future generations. If you make no effort to both live well and live within a reasonable footprint, it shouldn't be surprising when you fail to achieve both goals.

sdedovic 5y ago

Hey these are also the folks behind the Orca visual programming language/MIDI sequencer! Its a real weird and cool tool, highly recommend checking it out if you're into experimental electrical music. http://100r.co/site/orca.html http://100r.co/site/orca.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH5GaVU0ed8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH5GaVU0ed8

suby 5y ago
Thanks for sharing this! It's really cool

picture 5y ago

> a Macbook Pro draws 30 W when in use. If in use for 6 consecutive hours, it would draw roughly 160W per day While I do find their lifestyle fascinating, there's a nit I feel compelled to pick here. Watt is a unit of power, while watt per time is a unit of energy. If the Macbook draws 30 W and used for 6 hours, it would have consumed 180 Wh exactly. If it draws 30 W for 6 hours every day, then it would be 180 Wh per day. I have no idea how authors ended up at 160 W per day, which doesn't make sense.

stonogo 5y ago
Its power consumption is not static, and they got the numbers by measuring it.
- danielheath 5y ago
  You still can't meaningfully use "Watts per day" in that context (for that matter, I struggle to imagine a scenario in which it was a meaningful unit). Given the number involved was 160, I suspect the likely unit they meant was "Watt-hours per day".
  - imachine1980_ 5y ago
    When you live in a boate who have limited energy storages
    - danielheath 5y ago
      Storage is watt-hours. Watts per day would be used to describe the rate at which your power consumption increases (eg “as winter comes on, power used heating the boat will increase 100 watts per day”).
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        Watts per day could be used to describe the rate of decay of strength of a team of horses on expedition. But probably for that application you'd better use horsepower instead.

Scoundreller 5y ago

> When we have a reliable internet connection, we gather copies of all the online material we will need. We keep offline versions of entire websites, writing guides, articles and even whole sections of Wikipedia (using wget) If we find ourselves without a connection, we can still solve our problems by using our offline mirrors. Kiwix is a good solution here. There’s also “RACHEL”, which lets has massive resources that you can save offline in case of Armageddon. The latter isn’t free, but has a good list of content worth investigating. Don’t wget wikipedia. https://www.kiwix.org/en/ https://www.kiwix.org/en/ https://worldpossible.org/ https://worldpossible.org/

joshvm 5y ago
Kiwix is nice, I maintained the the wiki server at the South Pole last year. Very useful when internet is down. However the tools are a bit janky and difficult to customise, though they’re being updated at the moment. Odd things like you can’t sort content (if you have say 30 titles) and the built in sort order is based on a random ID string, not content title (why??). I had to write a custom single file webpage with a lot of inline JS to improve things (like sorting elements after load). I also had it pull data from the station intranet so that we could have lots of relevant info in one place, but the only way to do that was to statically generate the page and then restart the wiki server every five minutes… but in the end it's incredibly useful to have that service available and it runs on crappy hardware easily.
- kilroy123 5y ago
  Wow that's a really cool gig. I've always wanted to do a summer down there but as a software engineer I doubt there's much need for me. (I have visited the continent as a tourist) What is your official job title down there?
  - joshvm 5y ago
    I was a winterover for IceCube 2020-21. Mostly sysadmin type work, and some hardware maintenance in the field. https://icecube.wisc.edu/category/news/life-at-the-pole/ https://icecube.wisc.edu/category/news/life-at-the-pole/

Havoc 5y ago

Can’t picture myself living like this. Imagine range anxiety of a car except with water…no thanks. To each their own I guess I could do living in a remote location though. Little bit more predictable

Seirdy 5y ago
Many would argue that this mentality of scarcity is necessary to ensure that our ecological footprint is negligible.
Danborg 5y ago
I agree with your take. I felt the same way while reading this.

_bfhp 5y ago

When I was younger it was still fashionable to promote Slacktivism. I remember being a teenager buying a book of 101 things you can do to be More Green. But now I think it's become more and more implied. Between this and the first half I've read of Braiding Sweetgrass, I'm getting seriously irked by this massive focus on individual, very isolated choices as proxies for the world at large. It's fine for people to promote "old ways" of living but to cast it as exactly what we need for "the ecological society we’re trying to build" feels so wrong to me. We need organizers, movement leaders, direct actions, we need to shake the Democratic Party out of corruption and uselessness. It's great to have a lifestyle--I agree with most of the values described in this post--but merely living it yourself does nothing for the human world or "ecology." A single animal rights activist stealing a chicken and getting flamboyantly arrested probably does more for climate change than this crew's work for their entire lives, because she moves the world a tiny bit closer toward giving up factory farming.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nice_byte 5y ago
the people behind this project are Canadian.
kamranjon 5y ago
I could not disagree more. I am inspired by people who live their principles and can smell a virtue signaling attention magnet from a mile away. I don’t think anyone has any responsibility to change the world, if people would actually stop trying so hard we might actually get somewhere. A couple who built a knowledge compendium on how they live and some fun games and software they wanted to share with the world is fine by me.

julianeon 5y ago

On the one hand, I really like their principles and their commitment to art for art's sake, in their games. On the other hand, I owned one of their games (Donsol), which used to work just fine. Then they removed it and basically reimplemented it in their new unique format, which I couldn't get to work. So it was frustrating to have a game I was looking forward to playing, having it at one time (it worked fine), and now not having it anymore, when my old computer died and I tried to download the thing I'd bought before once more.

entaloneralie 5y ago
Need a hand getting Donsol running? Famicom(NES) or Uxn version?
tdjsnelling 5y ago
I built a web version of Donsol for the same reason. It's a PWA so you can also install it on your device and play offline. https://donsol.tdjs.tech/ https://donsol.tdjs.tech/

elihu 5y ago

I like the Ergo Proxy references.

betwixthewires 5y ago

The two that run this site are fantastic graphical artists and designers as well. Ran into them at merveilles.town and checked out this site years ago. I'm not sure if they're still active there.

sprkwd 5y ago
They are still active there.

mikeytown2 5y ago

Pretty sweet setup there. I'd personally always opt for more power. Could replace LPG with induction cooktops in theory; but I am not in a boat. Salt water is very hard on almost everything so it sounds like they have a system figured out. Living off grid, on land is something I've been looking into. Power is everything. The more you have, the better your comfort is. Ideal build: ICF foundation/house, exterior insulation. DIY friendly horizontal geothermal for hvac and water heating, rocket mass fireplace as backup heat. Ground water well, dehumidifier backup water generation, large in ground water tanks. Solar panels everywhere, Lifepo4 batteries, in ground propane tank for backup power, extra solar power can be used for heating water; everything would be electric including cars. Greenhouse with ground to air heat exchanger pipes about 10 feet underground so the power of keeping it above freezing is just a fan. Septic drain field, if water is very scarce then grey water recycling. Anything I missed on the ultimate off grid house?

07d046 5y ago

In their "basic medicine kit": Oxycodone/acetaminophen (severe, short term pain) Paracetamol isn't normally an alternative for oxycodone. Also, if travelling internationally, I'm pretty sure there are countries that will consider oxycodone as equivalent to heroin even if you have a prescription.

madaxe_again 5y ago

I live off grid. We started with a stone hut in a deep valley without cell signal, and no infrastructure, and now we’ve all the power we can use, all the water we can use, and 140Mb/s internet. The whole “oh, we only need 3L of water per day and 500Wh is enough” lifestyle is unsustainable. I know, I’ve tried it, and I’ve seen many others go through it - you go gently mad spending your days managing your limited resources, and eventually give up. Power: we’ve 4.8kW of solar panels, a hydro generator that makes a continuous 280W through the winter months, and three small 150W nominal wind turbines, which also help in the winter. Storage is 84kWh of OPzS lead acid cells. 2x 5kW Victron multiplus for triple phase output, and their MPPTs for the various inputs. I also laid 500m of 18mm2 SWA cable from our powerhouse to the cabin we built, so we can have power here too. Stuck a 1:2 transformer at each end to get more carrying capacity. Water: there are a number of muddy, sulphurous seeps in the side of the valley. In the winter there’s water, in the summer, mud. Laid tubing with simple pre filters on the intakes down to a chain of IBCs 70m above the valley floor - 50 micron, 10 micron, 1 micron, carbon, then store in the IBCs. At each house (there’s both the mill and the cabin) I then re filter through a 1 micron sediment filter and a carbon block, as algae tend to grow in the tanks. For drinking, we have a simple reverse osmosis setup along with a UV block under each kitchen sink. As our fallback, basically for august when the river runs dry and the mud turns to dust, we’ve a submersible pump next to the hydro intake, which is a low spot in the bedrock and holds a pool of increasingly stagnant water in the summer. Still, our water treatment system makes it perfectly good for everything. Hot water, I took inspiration from someone on here, and built a pair of big damn heat exchangers - excess heat from stoves in winter, or from power in summer, gets dumped into 4000L of water in a heavily insulated bunker. I aim to keep it at 85C, as above that I risk melting things. There’s then 200m of coiled tubing in each bunker, through which flows the high pressure cold water (7bar), which comes out somewhere around 40-60C, depending on the season Sewerage, we are using above ground vermi composting tanks built from IBCs (IBCs are dead handy, very cheap used) - works a charm, no smells or anything. Grey water just goes to a soakaway. Internet: I’ve talked about this here before. Solar powered mast atop the valley with an atheros w/ openwrt, LTE with an LPDA antenna as our nearest cell mast is line of sight from there but 20km away, Wi-Fi relay using yagis to each point of consumption, and then APs dotted around so we have coverage over our few sq km. Heat in both houses is from a log stove. We’ve 11ha of forest, which we are clearing the dead but still standing trees (ash, oak) from, both for the sake of the forest and for the sake of us not freezing in the winter. We’re insulated up to the gunwales in the cabin, and the mill has a huge thermal mass. We have a dishwasher, a washing machine, home theatre with surround (and oh boy you can crank it when your nearest neighbour is 20km away), all the modern conveniences. Sure, it all had to be carried in by hand or on the aerial cableway, as the one thing we don’t have is road access, but I’m one who’s strongly in favour of “effort now, easy later”. What else… I use an rpi running openhab to monitor and control everything, from power production and consumption to water levels and quality, to the weather. I can’t control the weather, to be clear. Other things… our chainsaws are battery powered (makita’s 36V stuff packs an amazing punch, and no two-stroke screaming in your ear), as are our brushcutters, polesaws, everything. Only thing that uses fossils is the truck, and that will change. This year I’m planning on more infrastructure - probably a small monorail, as I’ve got bored of injuring myself carrying stuff up 45 degree inclines, and a large pond up the hill, for water storage, and possibly hydro, possibly pumped. I’m also thinking about building myself a proper workshop, as at the moment I just drag equipment around the forest and cover it with tarps for the weather, which is also getting boring! Oh, and I’ve grand plans to turn our ‘88 hilux into a strange beast - remove the elderly million mile diesel, add hub motors and as many batteries as I can cram into the engine bay and under the flatbed. That’s the main thing making me want a workshop. So, anyway - my point is sustainability. I’ve invested significant time and resources here over the last two years so that our life here is a sustainable one - ecologically, sure, but also for us - it’s enough work just being here - I don’t want to have to always be worrying about resource management too, and I want to be able to still live here when I’m a feeble old dodger.

anthk 5y ago

Gopher and Gemini would be better than a site with huge png images. Also, I don't like some non commercial licenses for sw. Tildes/SDF got it better in this case.

solididiot 5y ago

>> Keeping an eye on the weather, studying charts carefully, picking good anchorages, and having a good rode and anchor was our best possible insurance, but there are dangers that are beyond anyone's control, dangers that even the most skilled sailor cannot avoid, e.g., a shipping container adrift, dead heads at night, whales, etc. dead heads at night. What is that?

capableweb 5y ago
> A deadhead is a log or large tree in a waterway submerged just below the surface and difficult to see. If a fiberglass boat strikes a deadhead, the boat could be damaged and even sunk. The lower unit could be ripped off causing a hole in the transom and/or render the boat inoperable. A diligent forward watch will help prevent this potential danger.
- totony 5y ago
  How difficult would using sonar be to protect against that?

tjwds 5y ago

I highly recommend the log of 100R's relatively recent passage across the Pacific where they put these ideas to practice, Busy Doing Nothing: https://100r.co/site/busy_doing_nothing.html https://100r.co/site/busy_doing_nothing.html

justforfunhere 5y ago

My humble opinion, To everyone who has commented here and even the OP. You aren't really off the grid, imo. Because you are still connected to the internet and writing comments here or blogs. Go read Walden.