Oh, yup! I totally missed the approximately sign.
Except… that it doesn’t. Serious question: am I OOTL on a joke?
Edit: I totally missed that it was an approximately sign. Derp.
I had a partner with genital HSV-1. YMMV, but in general:
I love when someone writes a pleasant “this is my experience and what worked for me.” And then people downvote. ITT some real night owl/daywalker tension. :D
Just to add some crunchy bits to the batter, your circadian rhythms will most likely shift as you age. For example, I used to be hardcore night owl, and couldn’t imagine my life ever going differently. Then I couldn’t do it anymore and managed to become a second-shifter. Now I’m all about getting in bed early and up early.
Your point is spot-on. Fully agreed: modern dishwashers are way more energy- and water-efficient than manually washing dishes. Like at least an order of magnitude.
I personally struggle with this one for different reasons. Energy and water consumption are a very tight concern since I live on a sailboat. I can’t just crank the tap to get more water. Marine health is also a concern since, ya know, it’s all around me, and I eat some of these critters around my boat. Surfactants in detergent are deeply problematic in the environment and are not removed by most wastewater treatment. Moreover, surfactants impede wastewater treatment because of the emulsification interfere with aerobic treatment (Poland seems to be actively working on the problem). FWIW, manual dish detergent also has surfactants, especially SDS/SLS, so manual washing is not a panacea.
I don’t think there is a “right” answer to be had. But it sticks in my craw both ways.
She didn’t change; she finally revealed herself. In short, her attachment type is anxious-avoidant. That shit burns down everything around it. She was jealous AND cheating, which was just rich given that we were ENM/poly. I was so busy with life, work, and my sailboat that I only had romantic bandwidth for her.
I am forever changed. I went on an intensive therapeutic and introspective journey. Anxious-avoidant people can be immensely attractive anxious attachment types like me. I identified that in myself, addressed my own life traumas, and developed my personal boundaries. These days, I’m less poly, more monogamish. I approached dating with explicitly defined intentions and must-haves, rather than just random chance. I found the partner of my dreams, and we’re about to celebrate eight years together.
Early on, there were mutual warning signs, but we both thought we had the tools to face any challenges. As I mentioned, I had poor boundaries, which now would put an immediate end to any such bullshit.
What can I offer now?
Electric murder racquet FTW! Mosquitoes and houseflies don’t stand a chance.
Whenever even a slight amount of water flows, it spins. Shut off all the faucets and spigots, and it should not move. If it moves, you have a leak.
Oh, it’s unreal. You probably know this, but for anyone else reading the thread: water meters have a leak indicator. On analog meters, it’s a small spinning indicator; it could be a dial, needle, or just a spinning icon.
Humorous on face value, but that’s not what utility companies do. In every utility district I ever lived (and it’s a lot), if the meter readers were “unable” to read your meter, the consumption was estimated.
I had many conflicts about this because I traveled a lot for work and knew that there was no possible way I could have consumed as much electricity as they estimated. It turned it that meter readers could just claim the meter was inaccessible, and their job was considered completed.
Ah, yeah, that makes way more sense. TIL mirror wrap is a thing.
If this is real and setting aside the steaming pile that is the Cybertruck… The effort required to polish that much stainless steel to that level of finish is astounding.
Poor taste but amazing execution!
Depends on which context in which you’re interested. Internet? Hm… For the refit part and thinking through/designing for all of these factors, maybe The Duracell Project (https://www.youtube.com/@TheDuracellProject/videos). Most of the people I know actually doing this stuff are… actually doing it. There’s not a lot of time and bandwidth to create an accessible internet resource. And the seriously salty folk, most of them barely have email. Among my sailing peers, I’m the most technologically capable, and that’s not saying much. :D We tend to eschew the high tech that invariably will let us down when we most need it. Much of seafaring knowledge and skills are born from hard experience and sitting around getting drunk with old salts, which is its own kind of hard experience. :D
You start small, push the limits, break shit, find fixes in order get back to port, and find what works for you with what you have at hand. Anything you couldn’t fix, you go to your marina neighbors or the internet to find jury-rigs for that specific failure mode. In your day-to-day life, learning some basic knots, how to make whoopie slings and soft shackles with Dyneema, wilderness first aid, wilderness first responder training, even basic disaster preparedness all help change your perspective on how you approach your day. For example, drilling for natural disaster response, at least for me, shifts my mindset into a “what could go wrong,” “what are the failure modes of [this critical component]” way of thinking. These are aspects you can explore without a boat or having wilderness nearby.
I haven’t watched a lot of her stuff, but Wind Hippie Sailing (https://www.youtube.com/@WindHippieSailing/videos) is a seriously badass solo dirtbagger (not a pejorative; it’s technical term cribbed from rock climbing). Solo sailors are a breed apart and a few steps above the rest of us salty dogs who have crew.
Downloaded to my Kiwix app or installed on phone/tablet and mirrored across a bunch of backup devices:
Now if you’re okay with books, lots of great resources there.
Let me know if you any additional questions. Happy to share.
Edit to add: Practical Sailor (https://www.practical-sailor.com/), a great internet resource . JFC, how did I forget that?!
The diarrhea is going to be one of the biggest challenges. The differences is food, parasite/microbiota challenges… dehydration and acclimating to the local food supply are going to present problems.
Sure, I’m not going to be replacing any modern consumables or modern tech. And the LiFePO4 cells are ultimately going to wear out. The solar cells will lose generation capacity. But I’ll probably be long dead before that capacity becomes a concern. Hopefully the hardcopy books don’t get wet, because that’s where I keep the stuff I don’t keep in my head.
That said, there’s very little I can’t fix on my boat. I did all of the work in my complete refit. If you know any open ocean sailors or sailboat delivery captains, we are a ridiculously resourceful bunch. Prepared AF. Kinda like the Eagle Scouts of the sea. Also, our gear is robust, resilient, and fault tolerant.
We sit around and practice this shit. There’s not much else to do out in the ocean. :D “Oh, your refrigerator compressor died.” I’ve got a brand new, spare compressor and a second refrigerator; move the most critical foods accordingly. “The second fridge died.” Immediately switch to non-refrigeration food preservation techniques. “You’re running critically low on salt.” Use the brine rejection from the watermaker. And so on. Because of all the interlocking dependencies on sailboats, we have failover modes all the way down to tarring the hull and weaving hemp lines. Okay, not that far, but you get the idea.
A) I’m very resourceful and have formal wilderness training, but naked and completely foreign environs… Probably not going to do so well, especially if the weather is harsh.
B) Pretty well. My backpack is my bag of tricks and my daily loadout includes my multitool, an IFAK, some clothing layers, and two water bottles. But it’s still going to be a challenge because of completely foreign environs.
C) Perfectly awesome, living my best life. My home is my sailboat with solar, 40000Wh battery storage, water makers, extensive first aid, dried food and spices, and more books, movies, and video games than I could possibly finish in my remaining years.
I’m totally guilty too. I’ll be right next to you in that circle of hell reserved for “SWEs who failed to optimize their code.”
So this is a cool thing to notice as you go about your life: there are no unexploited corners in a balanced ecosystem (reference: Sylvia Earle); take note of what in your locale consumes what. If there is energy to consume, something has evolved to consume that. Ants are amazing at making use of small caloric particles that other organisms will ignore because the bits are too small.
Plastic is an interesting case. Plastic is made of long chains of lipids (an energy storage molecule), polymerized into somewhat durable longer molecules. When some critter learns to crack those molecules, things could get very interesting for humans if we’re still around.
