The world gets better when we deliberately determine our values, and then pursue them with vigor.

When we define ourselves by what we are against, we center those bad things in our lives.

When we define ourselves by what we cherish, then we center those good things in our lives.

It's okay to be against things, just remember what you're working *towards* is more important than what you're working against.

lean resource management:
Establish and determine a steady baseline of resource needs. Refer to this baseline to understand your resource circumstances.

A baseline that is relative to your situation is useless. Determine what is *enough* and maintain that baseline.

If your needs grow with your resources, you will never have enough, and you will always be chasing more resources.

Having more resources does not mean you deserve more resources.

Not having resources does not mean you do not deserve resources.

A lack of resources means nothing more and nothing less than that you lack resources.

If you lack resources, seek assistance in reaching your resource need baseline.

If you find yourself in a situation where your need for resources cannot be sated, seek assistance in addressing this problem first.

With your baseline resource needs met, seek to understand how you can develop security and stability in your resources.

Some resources are consumed, like food, some resources are useful utilities, like a car or tools, and some resources are themselves productive, and contribute to your resources as you maintain them, such as solar panels, an electric windmill, batteries, or a food-producing garden.

When you have a resource surplus, seek to procure and maintain resources that reduce how much resources need to be secured from outside. The more your needs are met independently, the less your resource stability and security are affected by outside circumstances.

This is why it is so important to establish a resource baseline and stick to it. If your need for resources grows in line with your access to resources, you cannot develop independent resources.

Once your baseline need for resources has been attained, find balance and awareness. You have enough, now let yourself *be* enough.

With awareness you will come to be more familiar with your own circumstances, and the circumstances of those around you.

This is the final piece of lean resource management. With your excess resources, now leveraged through some manner of resource independence, support projects and endeavors which contribute to the world you want to live in. Do you have an excess of time? Figure out what you want to learn and learn it. Contribute your skills to volunteer efforts. Teach others your skills.

This is how we build a better world.

We seek to meet our own needs, we develop resource independence, and with this independence we grow as individuals, and we support others wherever they are in this process.

Reach out for assistance, and when you no longer need assistance, be the one to share it.

Then keep doing that for the rest of your life, and you will live a good life.

Hey, @BillySmith I just did some math that I think you'd enjoy.

I did some nerd math to figure out what the break-even point for a fully electrified RV would be, compared to diesel.

Here's the numbers I came up with.

amortizing the expense of a solar power system to determine the per-mile expense of an off-grid solarized electric RV, and the break-even point vs a diesel vehicle.

Standard RV has around 10 mpg efficiency, at $6 per gallon (current prices, likely to increase into the future, that's 1.6 miles per dollar, or 0.625 dollars per mile, just in fuel.

Let's assume school bus dimensions. big rectangular vehicle, 40 feet long, 10x 600 watt solar panels, for 6000 watts, triple that for 18000 watts if a slide-out system is implemented.

200 kWh system around $8000 for just the batteries (if the batteries are bought on the secondhand market. I've seen a 105 kWh CATL setup online for just $3800 before), assume $10k for motor, and $10k for inverter system, $200 per panel, $6000 for panels (triple gang extensible setup with 30 panels.

$34,000 for electrification setup, not including installation.

What is the break-even point of the installation?

Let's assume over a 30 year lifespan, the electrified setup might require $10,000 in repairs, for a total of $44,000.

What is the break-even point? at 10 mpg, 1.6 miles per dollar, the electrified bus has to travel at least 70,000 miles. Is that possible?

In the summer in a sunny region, there might be 12 peak sun hours, collecting 18kWh per hour, or 216kWh per day, enough to drive between 100 and 150 miles depending on wind resistance.

In winter, assume an average of 6 peak sun hours per day, for full sun, less for cloudy days. Average to 4 in winter, for a winter average of 72 kWh per day, enough to drive 36 to 54 miles.

split down the middle, summertime range is 125 miles per day, and wintertime range is 45 miles per day.
Each year theoretical range is 22,750 in summer (just under 3800 miles per month), and 8190 in winter (right around 1350 miles per month). (split the year in half. Assume half the year is making full summer capacity, and half the year is making full winter capacity. The difference evens out over the spring and fall months.

The break-even point is just before two and a half years, which is to say, if every opportunity is take to drive as much as possible on whatever energy is in the bus, it would take just less than 2 and a half years to drive 70,000 miles.

More realistically, someone on a long perpetual road trip might drive 1000 miles a month.

At this pace, the break-even point would come at just before 6 years of driving, assuming a steady 1000 miles of driving a month every month for the whole time.

To make this somewhat more realistic, 1500 miles a month is very realistically achievable during summer, which comes out to a pace of 375 miles per week, which is plenty of time to enjoy whatever there is to enjoy.

In the winter, find a nice place to park and hunker down, or greatly limit travels. We don't need to be pretending that the world is bright and full of life in the middle of winter. Humans are made to hibernate. Chill out.

@Wrewdison Woops, forgot, I'm running CInnamon Desktop Environment 6.6.9

@Wrewdison I have a bug report for Veilamp.

Running newest version (0.3.2) on LMDE 7 (Debian 13) with linux kernel Linux 6.12.107+deb13-amd64

When I launch Veilamp, it starts out at around 75% screen width, and then over about half a second, steps down to 50% screen width, and then settles on this, and then cannot be resized.

I don't have github or I'd post there :3

I was planning to borrow my family's truck to move my stuff down from Montana to Nevada.

With diesel at $6.50 a gallon in montana, I'm thinking it would actually be more economical to ditch my mattress, disassemble my shelves, and just stuff everything into my car to move.

I just ran some simple numbers.

If I throw away less than $850 of stuff, I come out ahead in just filling my car up to move.

There's been a *lot* of new videos posted from a lot of different outlets over the past couple days about 9/11, and sure, it's the 25th anniversary of the event. Makes enough sense.

But I'm here thinking to myself, if I was an authoritarian government, and I wanted to drum up obedience and justify authoritarian crackdowns in the lead-up to a potentially destabilizing (to the authoritarian government) election, something I might do is refresh the memory of an intensely traumatic situation that happened just barely outside of recent memory.

You know, get people thinking about it, get the fear center in their brains active, get that fight-or-flight mode ready to go.

But that's not it, of course. That's just setting the stage as it were.

The real action is to then stage a Reichstag fire. Stage some kind of event that echoes the memory of that trauma that you just refreshed. That's how you make people dance.

It's like a horror movie. You don't just spring the jump right away, you build up tension, then when you spring the jump, it's more impactful.

I'm not saying that's what's happening, and I don't actually think that the spate of new videos about 9/11 are some coordinated effort, that's just silly, you couldn't coordinate so many different outlets to do this on purpose. But I bet even without coordinating it, the people in power could predict fairly accurately that this would be a major anniversary that would be at the top of a lot of people's minds, and play off of that.

Maybe nothing will happen. I really hope that nothing will happen. If something *does* happen, then I would have a lot of doubt about the professed origins of whatever happens, especially if the government jumps on it as a justification for anything.

When we give in to fear, impulse, and paranoia, we are no better than animals.

And as any furry will tell you, we *are* still just animals.

Our capacity for patience, reflection, and cooperation is what distinguishes us from animals.

Practice patience, reflection, and cooperation. Be better.

When you use diffusion models to create images (so-called ai art) you put off people who value effort and sincerity in creative works.

The people you reach with such images are either people who lack the perception to recognize such images, or those who don't value effort and sincere care and attention.

What sort of organization or community do you expect to build around such people? Dull, apathetic consumers do not make for an engaged community.

Put another way: I seek out creative works and organizations that I can contribute to or engage with, that are created and run by people who care about what they do, its quality and how it affects other people.

When I see diffusion-created images, it tells me the people behind that project are lazy and apathetic, and my energy is best spent elsewhere.

You can do better.

How long do you think countries around the world start recognizing excess-carbon-producing countries as an existential threat and treating them as such?