Had a friend that picked up busted washers and dryers to fix as a side hustle. Made about $600/wk. Went to get a part from him and he only had two different types. He explained that there are only two versions of most domestic (US) washer/dryer parts. Tell him the brand and he’ll tell you which part.

But they’re hardly ignorant of farming, and they talk among themselves. Do you think they don’t have internet?! Hell, an AG class was where I finally under how the quadratic equation can be applied.

How are farmers still buying John Deere crap?! I understand farm equipment is a long term purchase, but I’d expect new sales to have tanked years ago. And farmers are any but ignorant on this point.

Along these lines…

We ex-wife and I had a horizontal freezer her folks gave us. We lined the bottom with rows of bottled water, filled it over the tops with the garden hose, put our frozen groceries on top. We had a freezer that would easily last 2-weeks if a hurricane knocked us out, and plenty of clean water. Plus, being “thermally full”, it took less power.

If the caterpillars are horn worms, and I bet money they are, you can easily find them with a UV flashlight. The cheap lights are best as they’re brighter (less real UV) than good ones. Little fuckers POP at night. (May work on other species, no clue.)

These are the best bang for the buck, don’t get the truly crappy ones with multiple cheapo LEDs. You may get away with using a 14500 battery for super bright results. AA is fine though.

Bonus: Some people fry 'em up. You do you.

That’s not a fair picture, but it does give a rough idea. There are a many major factors that count.

• Proximity to coast. Just a few miles can make a dramatic difference.
• Relation to eye wall is huge. Hurricanes rotate widdershins. One side carries the full force of the hurricane, as bad as it gets. By the time winds and rain rotate to the other side, things have calmed a bit. Which “side”? Depends, could be any cardinal compass point. For me, getting the eye wall to the west is the worst. For Milton, people on the south side are going to take it in the teeth.
• ^ Much the same for storm surge. (I may be off on this one.)
• Speed of the hurricane. If it sits on you and slowly dumps rain, you’re flooded. The longer those winds sit on you, the more stress on structures.
• Building codes. We Floridians have strong building codes, varies a little depending on how far inland you are. I’m guessing other states to the north aren’t as strict?

tl;dr: Don’t put too much stress on this scale, though it’s a useful metric to see what might happen.

We had a nice setup, quasi public/private power company. Prices were low and we voted on the governing board. Cool.

The the county sold us out to a strictly private firm and most people’s prices spiked 40%, literally overnight.

I’m not much of a socialist, government solutions carry their own issues and inefficiencies, but a service as vital as power (and water and sewage) should be public works.

Is your area not undergoing a massive expansion? I’m in NW Florida, hardly a hotbed of environmentalism, and brother, business is booming.

I fully expect the 20-miles between the edge of town and my camp to be covered in the next decade. Any non-residential and non-commercial land is getting bought up and covered. I expect to see solar panels all they way in the space between the interstate and the state highway, already a few spots where you can see clear from one road to the other over the panels. Very exciting!

Great example is Logitech solar keyboards. Never had one die unless it was left in a dark closet for 6-months, and after leaving on it on the porch for lunch, good to go.

Been buying these for my users for years, never had the battery crap out.

Ticks don’t come with flowers. They hang out in and on wood.

I was gonna say, these places are 1/40th of a pixel on the map, but those are some sizeable acreages! Pleasant surprise.

And think of the cost savings on maintaining all that land.

No. Fuck no. Hard no. I refuse to live packed in like rats.

Uh, I was gonna say. Humans practice agriculture around rivers because they flood, fill the area with rich silt and organic matter. Nile delta anyone?

Got a couple of acres of swamp down in Florida. Fascinating seeing this on a microscale. From my tent and north, we got 1-3" of crappy topsoil. Heavy thatch of roots, then sand and some clay. Go 10’ south and its rich, black silt, the real sticky icky. 10-seconds with a trowel, you know what’s up, where you’re at.

Hell, the flora changes within 50-100’, just look up. Pine and oak to the north, cypress and the like to the south. Doesn’t take a masters in ecology to see the lay of the land.

“Let’s build shit here! Look how rich the soil is, surely if will never flood right next to a river!”

I am disappoint at the engineers who didn’t make those bridges taller. C’mon guys.

Even tiny fish work fine. I put a little pump in mine to circulate the water. It’s quite lively in there!

“The only real unifying denominator among preppers these days is people who are smart enough to be aware of what the world is like … and they have the gumption to do something about it,” Ramey said.

If you libs don’t pull your head out of your ass, jesus christ. We’re not voting our way out of fascism. It’s here. It’s now. Today.

Fuck me, the GOP is pulling every trick in the book to pull your vote. My registration has already been purged once. How about you? Ever show up and find out you can’t vote?

Anyway, I can run, hide and fight. Can you? Got a place to go? Got food there? Got guns you’re practiced with? Plenty of ammo? Water supply?

Keep making fun of us armed country folk. Jesus, at least you won’t have to fight your liberal city neighbors. I got Brown Shirts right here on my fucking street.

I’m 53 and never in life imagined this shit would happen in America. Never in life imagined I would be thinking this way. 80s me would be fucking appalled at who am I now and what I’m preparing for.

Headlines like that are why people don’t understand evolution and naysayers come along, “Thought evolution took millions of years?!”