>I forgot how I loaded it into the machine, but perhaps it was easier then putting a usb stick in a computer.
My library had two forms of microfiche.
One was a cartridge containing a single spool, which upon being inserted into the reader would unspool onto an internal mechanism. You used two jog wheels, one fine and one coarse, to control the speed at which you traversed the tape, and there were numeric inputs so you could go to an arbitrary page. (it got close enough)
The second were flat rectangular sheets with pages laid out in a grid, and you placed the flat sheet onto a glass bed, pulled down a cover and slid the plate into the reader, using etch-a-sketch-like controls to move along the x and y axis.
In either case you could insert a dime and a single page of whatever was on the screen would spit out from an attached printer.
> now the likes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are GSE’s.
Uh.. they've been GSEs since their founding. (12 U.S. Code § 1717)
"Yeah but in 2008 the government bought shares in th.." Doesn't matter. Still GSEs before that. "But they were privatiz.." Doesn't matter. Still GSEs after that.
Every time someone says "both sides are the same" a billionaire flooding media with 'both sides' messaging in order to distract from what is going on's taint twitches.
>That business, Step Up Social, helped companies grow on TikTok and Instagram Reels.
I would rather push around a shopping cart full of aluminum cans whenever I'm not sleeping under a bridge than (waves hand) build that.
Instead, I leave my work at work once I hit 8 hours, get a full night's sleep, go scuba diving somewhere tropical twice per year, and build things that won't embarrass my parents.
The reasoning behind Roe v. Wade was controversial from day one. Texas v. Johnson is much more straightforward and doesn't suffer from controversy. United States V. Eichman re-affirmed the ruling. This is going to be extremely tough to weasel out of without giving the game away that the United States is now fully embracing authoritarianism.
> This is going to be extremely tough to weasel out of without giving the game away that the United States is now fully embracing authoritarianism.
We’re at the point of mobilizing military forces for civilian law enforcement on transparently fictitious formal rationales; the full embrace of authoritarianism in the US is out in the open.
> without giving the game away that the United States is now fully embracing authoritarianism.
The multiple civil suits that Trump is engaging in as president against pollsters and news organizations for saying things he doesn't like, the arrests + deportation of foreigners for protesting Israel, and the targeting of law firms who represent people opposing the administration don't already indicate this? Going after flag burning just further confirms that we're slowly but surely embracing authoritarianism.
Well, those indicate that Trump is fully embracing authoritarianism. Whether the court system lets him go... they're going further than I like, but I hold out hope that they may stop him short, no matter how much he wants to go there.
I hope for the same thing, but it's still sad to see the point we've reached where some people actively cheer these actions on or don't treat them with the seriousness they deserve.
But they have been buying the bootstraps. They were buying water from the town, and they were perfectly aware that it wasn't something the town was obligated to provide.
The problem seems to be that the townsfolk want to water their lawn:
> “These men were brought in because I had put them on a water restriction schedule,” Pacheco said in an interview. “They are upset they can’t water their lawns while people can’t have water to actually live.”
They're not completely cut off; they just have to significantly further to purchase their water, and some of them do:
> Some are driving two hours to Pueblo to buy water. Many have been getting water in the town of Blanca, where officials offered — only as an emergency solution until the end of August — to let people fill up water tanks from a hose connected to a fire hydrant.
I don't think this is a situation where we're laughing at people who are in the Find Out phase.
Many people haul water in Colorado because the bootstrapping method of drilling your own well is now heavily restricted, and of course the same people stopping you from drilling the well (government) is happy to monopolize and sell you the water.
Meanwhile you can use percussion drilling to drill a well of virtually arbitrary depth, at very little cost, as was done by the Chinese for thousands of years to depths well below 500ft with not much more than bamboo and rocks.
I find this quite cynical, but I also can't speak to half of your family, ha!
I am one of the folks who, in my youth, purchased land in between Fort Garland and San Luis, with dreams of off-grid living. I succeeded, mostly, but not without many hiccups - the locals being one of them.
For me, "off-grid" was about _control_: control over my mortgage (none!), bills (no monthly subscriptions to privatized power companies generating profit!), and, well, life in general. I'd say the general theme wasn't so much about "sticking it to the man" (what's to stick and who?) or "being self reliant" (impossible), but about fighting classism _to some degree_ via a veritable case of civil disobedience.
To my understanding, it is basically illegal OR extremely difficult to find a living situation where someone else (bank, etc.) isn't profiting off folks, and I find that, well, avarice. But you could find a situation like that out in the valley, because land was cheap and you could "get away" with a lot out there, which basically is just another way of saying folks could _afford_ to be poor.
America is entrenched in classism, and everywhere I look someone with less money getting fucked. And this is ESPECIALLY true when it comes to building code enforcement: wealthy folks pay the same amount as poor folks for things like permits, et. al. ($$), code means nothing when you can afford to hire engineers to prove its safe, pay for costly zoning variations, etc. So as harsh as the valley was in climate, it was basically an oasis of sorts to younger me for all those reasons.
All that to say: there are other genres of fiction worth exploring :)
I'm one of those off grid people, but I'm not looking for 100% off grid.
What I want is the equivalent of an UPS, but for everything.
If the municipal power grid, water and sewage go down. I want to be able to live mostly like before.
If there's a disruption in the logistics chain for the grocery store for any reason, I can live with what I have and can grow for a week or two in relative comfort, a month would suck.
If the wired internet connection goes down, I want to have a wireless option that automatically takes over.
It's a fantasy, an aesthetic. There is no living off-grid when you depend on a giant gas-guzzling truck with a thousand moving parts for your every needs.
Slightly better, but how do you get parts to repair your vehicle or anything else?
There's virtually no such thing as "off-grid", no such thing as a human being who lives totally unreliant on people around them in the modern age, unless you can carry everything you own in both hands, and can survive with nothing else. And there's damn few people out there living like that.
> How about an electric vehicle, a few dozen kW of solar, and a drilled well?
It's the same issue, you're still dependent on outside resources (especially if we're being realistic and understand that everything will break and need repaired/maintenance/replacement eventually), you're just switching which resources you're dependent on.
My point was really that "socialism" (in common use, especially on the libertarian right) is not really tethered to any historical definition. It's a political term to attach to things you don't like.
You have to very dense or bordering on disingenuous to not see the subsidized healthcare, subsidized childcare and spouses, subsidized moving costs, etc etc etc as "socialism" in the colloquial sense..... You can't get even 10% those benefits in the private sector without the same chuds screeching about communism.
Keyword you seem to have missed is "colloquial". Yes I know they don't. But 99% of the time those are the type of programs being railed against by free market evangelist....
But in reality....The USA mic is the closest thing to actual meaning of socialism the USA has ever tried.
Colloquial usage of the word is simply incorrect. I don't see how the US is the closest when nowhere in its history have workers significantly controlled the means of their own production. It simply hasn't happened around the world and I doubt it ever will.
You are projecting an ideology onto these people for no reason other than to satisfy your own bias and/or earn a few cheap upvotes from likeminded readers.
99.9% of these people are not living "off grid" for any particular ideological reason. They are living off grid because where they live is simply too dispersed and/or poor for there to be a grid. They've either always lived this way or adapted when they moved there.
Buyer: "but if it's off grid where do I get water"
Realtor: "there's services you pay for that truck it in and fill your tank, just like propane or heating oil"
> Debi and John Marks moved from Florida to build their dream home in the high desert of Costilla County. They bought property in the ranches two years ago with plans to build a retirement home and live off the grid among the pines
...
> “We wanted to be as independent as possible, and so we searched all over the state for property that would fit our needs, and this fit the bill,” Debi Marks said.
...
> Amanda Ellis bought a house in Costilla County five years ago to live off the grid.
These are people specifically moving to this unincorporated county in order to live "off the grid". This sounds ideological to me.
>These are people specifically moving to this unincorporated county in order to live "off the grid". This sounds ideological to me.
Realtors out there are selling sandcastles in the sky to flatlanders who don't know any better. The property they are buying is parceled out ranch land that went bust generations ago for the same reasons. These aren't "prepper" types so much as folks who want the Colorado high-country lifestyle when they can't actually afford it.
I think a lot of people are just cosplaying as Little House On The Prairie and think they're independent and "off grid" because they don't have monthly utility bills. Except they're buying their propane and buying their water, not to mention their clothes and everything else. So they're actually on-grid, but just with extra steps.
>You are projecting an ideology onto these people for no reason other than to satisfy your own bias and/or earn a few cheap upvotes from likeminded readers.
No, I read what they said during the interviews used in the article.
Which you didn't quote or reference and who's commentary was included because it is noteworthy, eye catching or controversial, not because it is representative.
It ain't no different than the 5am news person interviewing people off the streets and only the "interesting" responses making the 7am news.
If we want to compare family anecdotes I can trot out my own but that's not the point.
You don't need to pull quotes or provide references in a comment about the article you've just read and are commenting on.[1]
Of course, I read every word of the article instead of just the title, or skimming it, or having an AI summarize it and spoon feed it to me like I am a baby, and I expect others to do the same.
Excavation is an inherently dangerous and physically strenuous job. Additionally, when precision or delicateness is required human diggers are still used.
If AI was being used to automate dangerous and physically strenuous jobs, I wouldn't mind.
Instead it is being used to make everything it touches worse.
Imagine an AI-powered excavator that fucked up every trench that it dug and techbros insisted you were wrong for criticizing the fucked up trench.
> Instead it is being used to make everything it touches worse.
Your bias is showing through.
For what it's worth, it has made everything I use it for, much better. I can search the web for things on the net in mere seconds, where previously it could often take hours of tedious searching and reading.
And it used to be that Youtube comments were an absolute shit show of vitriol and bickering. A.I. moderation has made it so that now it's often a very pleasant experience chatting with people about video content.
Installing and learning to use NixOS probably takes a layman longer than ordering a laptop from amazon, receiving it, realizing something's wrong with it, returning it, getting a replacement that works, then downloading and running this tool on an ssd they already own.
My library had two forms of microfiche.
One was a cartridge containing a single spool, which upon being inserted into the reader would unspool onto an internal mechanism. You used two jog wheels, one fine and one coarse, to control the speed at which you traversed the tape, and there were numeric inputs so you could go to an arbitrary page. (it got close enough)
The second were flat rectangular sheets with pages laid out in a grid, and you placed the flat sheet onto a glass bed, pulled down a cover and slid the plate into the reader, using etch-a-sketch-like controls to move along the x and y axis.
In either case you could insert a dime and a single page of whatever was on the screen would spit out from an attached printer.