Discussions
Reply to: Phones for prepping Posted September 14, 2022
Reply to: Phones for prepping Posted September 14, 2022
Reply to: Phones for prepping Posted September 14, 2022
Reply to: Phones for prepping Posted September 14, 2022
Reply to: Phones for prepping Posted September 13, 2022

>>A dumbphone is far more practical and reliable in the case of, say, a flood, where you may not be safely able to charge your phone for an unknown period of time. […] do smartphones make our lives better? They make us better connected and easily entertained, but do they make us happier? They provide a lot of utility, but could we find that same utility elsewhere? It sounds like you have a very different threat model than I do. I would say that SIM cards are the first thing to go when paring a smartphone down to its most practical essentials, not the last. I bought my first cell plan *several years* *after* buying my first smartphone. I would say that a smartphone is, at its core, not a means of connection but a portable computer. A smartphone is a file backup, a camera and audio recorder, an MP3 player and ebook reader, a document scanner, an alarm clock, a calendar, an FM radio (if you get the right model, and yes, I’ve saved an FM news channel to my presets), a calculator, a translator, maps and routing software (GPS is a nice bonus there, but the maps and even the routing can be used without it), a copy of Wikipedia. I’ve oriented everything about my smartphone setup around needing as little Internet access or other connectivity as possible. I have a 250 MB data plan, and I never max it out. (I don’t keep social-media apps on my phone: the social-media services I do use, I access only through my laptop (the interface is much nicer there anyway: I could type a six-hundred-word comment on a touchscreen, but I’d far rather use a keyboard). There are occasions–such as waiting rooms–where I want to while away a few minutes with a smartphone, but that’s what sudoku apps are for.) I distrust the cell network’s reliability, especially in disaster situations, and keep an eye on the developing mesh-based communication methods. So far the only one that’s currently usable is Bridgefy, but I have some hopes for Berty and Matrix, and it’s still possible that Briar or even Serval will eventually get their acts together. — As for hardware and firmware, I’m quite fond of my Teracube. The design is aligned pretty well with my needs and values regarding self-sufficiency, and after the nightmare that was dealing with LG, it’s so nice to have a developer team that isn’t actively hostile towards its users. — I agree with hikermor about solar power banks. I do also have the recommended Ryno Tuff (which, in my limited experience, can keep several phones charged if you rotate them out regularly), but if I’m caught with only my everyday carry, it’s nice to have the integrated solar panel as a backup.

Reply to: How to prepare to leave the U.S? Posted August 22, 2022

We made this move in the 00’s, but I was a child and not privy to a lot of the details. If you can score a work visa, do it; if not, don’t lose hope. My dad’s attempts to find a sponsor failed, so he went directly for permanent residency instead: this took five years (most of which was convincing the U.S. to let us leave), and all of the immigrants I talk to are surprised that we went straight to permanent residency instead of coming to Canada on a work visa and getting permanent residency later or never. (One of my co-workers had been in the country on a work visa for seven years.) But while permanent residency took a lot of time and a lot of fingerprints, we did get here in the end. (Corollary, not just for the original poster but for every American reading: if you’re thinking you don’t want to be living in the United States in 2030, you should start making serious plans now. It can take a while.) — If you have foreign ancestors within the last couple of generations, check if you’re eligible for any citizenships by descent. IIRC I met a woman who got Hungary to give her an EU passport that way. — You can read the Canadian government’s information on immigrating at https://www.canada.ca/en/services/immigration-citizenship.html — U.S. non-resident tax liability is a minefield. If you don’t renounce (I haven’t, to keep my options open), you’re going to have to be very careful, especially about how you invest. In Canada, do not use TFSAs, RESPs, RDSPs, or non-registered mutual/exchange-traded funds not domiciled in the United States. RRSPs are good (including for mutual or exchange-traded funds you wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to have), and I hear individual stocks are okay although I don’t have personal experience there (not rich enough to have needed to branch out that far). And of course, shelf-stable food is always a sound investment. 😉 Regardless, keep filing your taxes and your FBARs every year that you have U.S. citizenship. They credit you for taxes paid in other countries and Canada is generally higher (integrating health-insurance payments into the taxes and all that), so you’ll approximately never actually owe anything as a U.S. citizen residing in Canada unless you f**ked up the investments or something, but the IRS wants to see the paperwork anyway. Good news: they will give you stimulus checks. You can also still vote in U.S. elections (no taxation without representation, eh?), as long as you’re willing to fill out an extra form or two and chip in a few bucks for postage. Jurisdiction-wise, you vote as if you still lived in your most recent American residence. If you live (or, now, “”live””) in one of the states with rampant privacy violations regarding their voter registries, this has the happy side effect of laying false trails on the Internet regarding your home address. — I’d be happy to help new immigrants get settled in as best I can (the level of detail in my advice will depend on how similar your area is to mine: I live in Ontario and can’t speak as much to other provinces, that sort of thing). I especially enjoy introducing people to grocery price-matching, which is not merely vestigial here the way it is in the States.

Reply to: Dress like a prepper: the wonders of wool/nylon blends Posted March 10, 2022
Reply to: What’s in my everyday backpack? Posted January 27, 2022
Reply to: What are your 2022 prepping goals and plans? Posted January 12, 2022

I’ve eaten and drunk in indoor public spaces with a half-face respirator on. I do it like this: Water (must use straw): Get as far away from other people as possible. Undo neck strap. Inhale. Lift up respirator. Stick straw into gap. Drink. Put respirator back down. Redo neck strap. Exhale. Food (only narrow foods like granola bars): similar procedure, but one bite at a time, and using the hand-not-holding-the-granola-bar-wrapper to hold the respirator in place while I chew (to make sure all the jaw movements don’t break the seal). I generally don’t redo the neck strap until the end, since I’m holding the respirator in place with my hand anyway. It’s not perfect, and with Omicron about I’m not even going to think about doing it again until my booster kicks in (got it as soon as I could, which was not as soon as I would have liked), but it gets the exposure down pretty far. I don’t mean to push you to do anything outside your risk tolerance, just offer some possible harm-reduction tools for your toolkit (and the toolkits of everyone else reading). — As for medical procedures performed on my face, I’ve reconfigured my annual dental-checkup and my every-two-years vision-checkup schedules so that they both take place in the summer, to take advantage of seasonality. (My dentist also has a *lot* of air purifiers, although their masks were mostly of mediocre quality. The masks at the optometrist were even worse, but now that I have some disposable N95s on hand I might be able to wear one of those without it sticking out enough to interfere with the equipment.)

Reply to: Effective mosquito repellant? Posted September 29, 2021
No activity yet.
Reply to: Phones for prepping Posted September 14, 2022
Reply to: Phones for prepping Posted September 14, 2022
Reply to: Phones for prepping Posted September 14, 2022
Reply to: Phones for prepping Posted September 14, 2022
Reply to: Phones for prepping Posted September 13, 2022

>>A dumbphone is far more practical and reliable in the case of, say, a flood, where you may not be safely able to charge your phone for an unknown period of time. […] do smartphones make our lives better? They make us better connected and easily entertained, but do they make us happier? They provide a lot of utility, but could we find that same utility elsewhere? It sounds like you have a very different threat model than I do. I would say that SIM cards are the first thing to go when paring a smartphone down to its most practical essentials, not the last. I bought my first cell plan *several years* *after* buying my first smartphone. I would say that a smartphone is, at its core, not a means of connection but a portable computer. A smartphone is a file backup, a camera and audio recorder, an MP3 player and ebook reader, a document scanner, an alarm clock, a calendar, an FM radio (if you get the right model, and yes, I’ve saved an FM news channel to my presets), a calculator, a translator, maps and routing software (GPS is a nice bonus there, but the maps and even the routing can be used without it), a copy of Wikipedia. I’ve oriented everything about my smartphone setup around needing as little Internet access or other connectivity as possible. I have a 250 MB data plan, and I never max it out. (I don’t keep social-media apps on my phone: the social-media services I do use, I access only through my laptop (the interface is much nicer there anyway: I could type a six-hundred-word comment on a touchscreen, but I’d far rather use a keyboard). There are occasions–such as waiting rooms–where I want to while away a few minutes with a smartphone, but that’s what sudoku apps are for.) I distrust the cell network’s reliability, especially in disaster situations, and keep an eye on the developing mesh-based communication methods. So far the only one that’s currently usable is Bridgefy, but I have some hopes for Berty and Matrix, and it’s still possible that Briar or even Serval will eventually get their acts together. — As for hardware and firmware, I’m quite fond of my Teracube. The design is aligned pretty well with my needs and values regarding self-sufficiency, and after the nightmare that was dealing with LG, it’s so nice to have a developer team that isn’t actively hostile towards its users. — I agree with hikermor about solar power banks. I do also have the recommended Ryno Tuff (which, in my limited experience, can keep several phones charged if you rotate them out regularly), but if I’m caught with only my everyday carry, it’s nice to have the integrated solar panel as a backup.

Reply to: How to prepare to leave the U.S? Posted August 22, 2022

We made this move in the 00’s, but I was a child and not privy to a lot of the details. If you can score a work visa, do it; if not, don’t lose hope. My dad’s attempts to find a sponsor failed, so he went directly for permanent residency instead: this took five years (most of which was convincing the U.S. to let us leave), and all of the immigrants I talk to are surprised that we went straight to permanent residency instead of coming to Canada on a work visa and getting permanent residency later or never. (One of my co-workers had been in the country on a work visa for seven years.) But while permanent residency took a lot of time and a lot of fingerprints, we did get here in the end. (Corollary, not just for the original poster but for every American reading: if you’re thinking you don’t want to be living in the United States in 2030, you should start making serious plans now. It can take a while.) — If you have foreign ancestors within the last couple of generations, check if you’re eligible for any citizenships by descent. IIRC I met a woman who got Hungary to give her an EU passport that way. — You can read the Canadian government’s information on immigrating at https://www.canada.ca/en/services/immigration-citizenship.html — U.S. non-resident tax liability is a minefield. If you don’t renounce (I haven’t, to keep my options open), you’re going to have to be very careful, especially about how you invest. In Canada, do not use TFSAs, RESPs, RDSPs, or non-registered mutual/exchange-traded funds not domiciled in the United States. RRSPs are good (including for mutual or exchange-traded funds you wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to have), and I hear individual stocks are okay although I don’t have personal experience there (not rich enough to have needed to branch out that far). And of course, shelf-stable food is always a sound investment. 😉 Regardless, keep filing your taxes and your FBARs every year that you have U.S. citizenship. They credit you for taxes paid in other countries and Canada is generally higher (integrating health-insurance payments into the taxes and all that), so you’ll approximately never actually owe anything as a U.S. citizen residing in Canada unless you f**ked up the investments or something, but the IRS wants to see the paperwork anyway. Good news: they will give you stimulus checks. You can also still vote in U.S. elections (no taxation without representation, eh?), as long as you’re willing to fill out an extra form or two and chip in a few bucks for postage. Jurisdiction-wise, you vote as if you still lived in your most recent American residence. If you live (or, now, “”live””) in one of the states with rampant privacy violations regarding their voter registries, this has the happy side effect of laying false trails on the Internet regarding your home address. — I’d be happy to help new immigrants get settled in as best I can (the level of detail in my advice will depend on how similar your area is to mine: I live in Ontario and can’t speak as much to other provinces, that sort of thing). I especially enjoy introducing people to grocery price-matching, which is not merely vestigial here the way it is in the States.

Reply to: Dress like a prepper: the wonders of wool/nylon blends Posted March 10, 2022
Reply to: What’s in my everyday backpack? Posted January 27, 2022
Reply to: What are your 2022 prepping goals and plans? Posted January 12, 2022

I’ve eaten and drunk in indoor public spaces with a half-face respirator on. I do it like this: Water (must use straw): Get as far away from other people as possible. Undo neck strap. Inhale. Lift up respirator. Stick straw into gap. Drink. Put respirator back down. Redo neck strap. Exhale. Food (only narrow foods like granola bars): similar procedure, but one bite at a time, and using the hand-not-holding-the-granola-bar-wrapper to hold the respirator in place while I chew (to make sure all the jaw movements don’t break the seal). I generally don’t redo the neck strap until the end, since I’m holding the respirator in place with my hand anyway. It’s not perfect, and with Omicron about I’m not even going to think about doing it again until my booster kicks in (got it as soon as I could, which was not as soon as I would have liked), but it gets the exposure down pretty far. I don’t mean to push you to do anything outside your risk tolerance, just offer some possible harm-reduction tools for your toolkit (and the toolkits of everyone else reading). — As for medical procedures performed on my face, I’ve reconfigured my annual dental-checkup and my every-two-years vision-checkup schedules so that they both take place in the summer, to take advantage of seasonality. (My dentist also has a *lot* of air purifiers, although their masks were mostly of mediocre quality. The masks at the optometrist were even worse, but now that I have some disposable N95s on hand I might be able to wear one of those without it sticking out enough to interfere with the equipment.)

Reply to: Effective mosquito repellant? Posted September 29, 2021