I tried a couple, but I always go back to just using the web interface through Firefox. It has all the features I need, no extra ads, trackers or permissions, and is pretty comfortable to use. Then again, I don’t moderate any communities and I’m not a very prolific poster, so my needs are pretty basic.
I know a place I could last for months, depending on what time of year the power’s lost, but it’s a long ways from here. And then, only if bullets for hunting were still available (they’ll get scarce fast, faster than toilet paper when COVID came around). Once the bullets are gone, I’ve either learned to trap or become a vegetarian.
black powder tech is very simple, you just need a mediocre blacksmith - and that’s just a strong man (or a woman, maybe) - and a little bathtub chemistry. basic black powder rifles are not the most accurate, you need rifling for that (grooves that create a spiral down the inside of the barrel of the rifle), but it’s easily doable. long/recurve/compound bows are an option if you have the knowhow and material science.
trapping/fishing is an option, as is animal husbandry, but hunting would never disappear
So just to start on your first point, let’s assume the flare hit and you need to start making black powder from raw ingredients. Since there are no more available with supply chain breakdown, without consulting the internet (also down), where are those coming from within walking or bicycle distance with maybe a paper map if you still have one?
well black powder is just a mixture of charcoal (you need wood and mud to make a charcoal pit), saltpeter (aka potassium nitrate), and sulfur. nitrate is found in many household products - hence the bathtub chemistry. there’s a lot of that stuff all over the place, it’s in just about everything - from salts, makeup products, fertilizer, plant food, etc. I’d use that first while building a natural extraction process since it takes a long time, months usually.
you’d take dung from animals (horse works well or cow patties), wood ash, dry straw, and lots of urine (barrels of the stuff). a few months later you drain off the liquid, boil it with finely ground charcoal and then filter it with cloth. simmer the strained liquid until it’s reduced by 3/4, you want it really concentrated. spill it out onto very shallow pans and let it dry to crystalize the nitrates. sulfur is readily obtained from many sources - usually volcanic but these days its in a lot of building/construction materials like gypsum. basic chemistry will allow you to extract it. I live near geologically active areas, so sulfur would be relatively easy to obtain in the future.
there’s no real set recipe for black powder, but approx 75% dried & powdered nitrates, 15% dried and powdered charcoal, 10% dried and powdered sulfur. you want to grind each individually and then mix them together in those ratios. now you have black powder. keep it dry and away from spaks/flame/heat - bull horns work really well for this.
casting shot is just melting lead in a specific form - my father probable still has his old tools for that but if he doesnt they’re not hard to make. the only tricky bit in the whole process of building your own diy black powder rifle is the barrel - you have to hand forge those around a mandrel (a rod of a specific thickness) - I’d use high grade steel rods for that, since they’re just laying around. blacksmithing is usually a two or three person setup. once I had a water wheel constructed I’d probably build a hydraulic powered trip hammer to make things easier.
I feel like if this ever happened, you’d want to practice that first step, because it might be easier to get gallons of urine then extract from a number of those sources.
the average person produces about 5 cups of urine in a day, and a gallon is 16 cups, so a group of people could easily produce anywhere between 1 and 3 gallons every day. the standard drum size is 55 gallons, so that’s easily obtainable. it’s a very slow synthesis, lasting 6+ months, you’d have between 3 and 10+ drums full of urine saved up at that point.
the average black powder musket or rifle gets about 50 shots per pound of black powder, and it takes a good minute or so to reload if you’re skilled, so you really dont carry that much powder around with you at any point in time. I figure you wouldnt need more that 5 pounds of it every month in a survival/hunting/defense against random invaders (rural setting) situation.
Med time people from other non-union locations. It’s been reported the scabs are getting a higher rate, hotel, and other per diem benefits. On top of bringing in green people who haven’t done a horse tumble.
Hungry actors from the country who didn't make it big in Hollywood?
Seriously though, I'm actually kind of interested in how much training and OSHA and insurance there is in this business to start with.
As for OP, you can do a bunch of things to support their strike, probably. Tell people you know this is happening and why it's a problem, leave the business a review on Google about it with whatever rating you desire, email the union and donate to any strike fund pool they might have. Even an hour of your wages/time spent helping them out will likely be of greater value than the percentage of the ticket price they would have received from you. And I'm sure they'll be excited to know someone other than themselves cares enough to do something to support them.
Edit: and you also get to show your kids how to constructively collaborate on solutions to social problems. Which would probably be cool for them to see too.
i went during the strike not realizing it, and there were signs saying you could get a refund afterwards if you ask. more importantly: bring ear protection, my watch was measuring 90+ decibels for an hour+.
Not really. Reddit was mostly fine, but I do at least feel that as there are fewer users on Lemmy it’s easier to interact with others than just posting to the void.
The button on my mouse that changes the sensitivity. It’s right on top between the left and right buttons, so it happens quite frequently. Maybe I should finally figure out if I can disable it in settings somewhere, but then I’ll need to change sensitivity for some reason.
Also, when I swipe back on Android and it takes me to the home screen, closing the app. When I swipe back on purpose I don’t even want to go back to the home screen, usually just the top of the app, or clear route etc. from Google Maps, but it’s even worse when I accidentally swipe. Whoever made that design choice deserves a kick in the groin. That is like the most single annoying thing about Android I can think of.
Yes, definitely. I’m more willing to share my honest opinion. For me, the fear of downvotes was real. I also sorted Reddit posts by Hot, and I rarely felt motivated to connect on a post that already had 1000 comments.
I was on Reddit yesterday to remind myself how bad it was. There’s no way I’m reading hundreds of comments especially when most are inane or insane or toxic.
Here, the comment quality is far better (higher signal to noise ratio so to say). And I finally recognize usernames that show up regularly. I feel most folks are commenting in good faith so I’m not constantly on alert looking for right-wing propaganda bots (or trolls or whatever they are). It’s all so much more relaxed and cordial. Hopefully we can keep it that way for a good long while.
I am interacting about the same amount but I am trying to comment with a little more thought and substance though it doesn’t always work out that way.
Agreed about the less people makes it more comfy. The whole instance is your community too, I guess being able to choose what you want from a instance makes everyone more comfortable. You don’t get overflown with people with different objectives when it comes to browsing Lemmy.
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