One of the nearly-free-standing Discworld novels by Sir Terry Pratchett, humorist and folklorist author is Monstrous Regiment. It is the story of women going to war. Most are young, all are ugly and easily mistaken for boys, and their nation is losing the war. Most join the army to find missing family or lovers, or just to get away from the horrors at home. It being Discworld it is also comedy, and has monsters, and references wars on Earth. The style of war is similar to Napoleon, only before guns, so they're at the level of pikemen and crossbows. The comedy is largely along the lines of hiding by thin disguise and acting like the other gender, and people being Shakespearean level of dumb. Its an enjoyable book and surprisingly tender on the subject of civil rights, and the cruel stupidity of bad religion.
Certain soldiers in Syria fighting stupidity today might appreciate this book.
The latest map of a divided california is this one:
Note the yellow line, somewhat hard to see. I got this from the UK Daily Mail, which is like the Enquirer. An English politician came to Orange County (LA suburb) to raise $1M in funds to help pay for a campaign to get this division on the ballot. This turns most of the coastal counties into a new state, and the eastern and middle parts into a different one. We'd be East California. They'd be West California. Fine. So what are the problems?
We do a lot of shipping here. Most of the state's ports are on the coast, and most of the water is here. I'm not sure we'd be willing to give them water at the same rate after they stole from us for 100 years. If we turn off the water to LA we save a lot of energy for the rest of our state, and they get to pay for desalination, which is very expensive, and requires many nuclear power plants along most of the state's fault lines.
A friend from France, fighting the ISIS bastards in Syria (woohoo!), said a friend of hers living here in PRK thinks that Sacramento should be lumped in. I have a problem with that. Hwy 99 and Interstate 5 both go through Sacramento, and the borders are likely to be patrolled and somewhat hostile, since WC is full of BLKLiesMurder and AntiFa assassins and UC Berkeley and Nancy Pelosi, the demented hag of evil.
She's proof there is no God, you know. Or that God is evil. Its one or the other. Which makes you less uncomfortable?
I looked at several other options for dividing the state. The one I came up with (LC/RC) doesn't take the entire North Coast, which hates San Francisco and Sacramento quite passionately. They've been abused and abandoned and would not want to be part of the same state as Antifa, since those bastards murdered their parents working as loggers in the 1990's. I might be convinced that Sonoma and Napa counties would join the commies, but not Lake County or Mendocino. Those are very rural and right wing. And the county with Vallejo might joint the commies too, since they mostly drive into the Bay Area for commute. However, Tracy is screwed, and I would absolutely expect roadblock stations for all the border roads, particularly once the water turns off. The LC will respond by blocking ports and barring travel through the bay into the RC, since Stockton and Sacramento both have ports for container ships despite been 80 miles inland. They aren't as busy as they used to be, but they still operate.
The other options proposed by some Silicon Valley billionaire type is the 6-Californias plan.
This is probably too complicated and "borrows trouble". Giving most of the water supply to Jefferson, which is largely dominated by Meth Junkies and pot growers and teen pregnancy isn't a good thing. Central California crosses the sierras but lacks good roads from west to east. The highest parts of the Sierras dominate, and those mountains are 13,000 feet for 150 miles NW to SE. West California contains LA, but doesn't contain the eastern part of the basin or Orange County. The rural parts like SLO get screwed by race-baiting murder hoboes and billionaire porn kings in Hollywood. South California is 90% desert and 10% San Diego. It would end up very poor and struggle to pay for paving all those desert roads. It might not try, turning the desert communities into the equivalent of Indian Reservations, only with white people. Silicon Valley likewise would ignore the southern part of their area, which includes half of Big Sur, Monterey, Salinas, and the Salinas Valley. It also has the South Bay and Peninsula. San Francisco itself is incredibly evil. Let me say that again. It is EVIL. It is multimillionaires in poverty, and poor people dying as a laugh. Its water and resources are all imported. Only natural air conditioning and port facilities are local. It doesn't make sense if you aren't in shipping. It is due to implode, like a zombie apocalypse. Possibly with cannibalism. I don't care much. I've visited the place too many times to forgive it for its EVIL.
Another option is 3 californias. This is divided up more by actual differences in politics. The Southern California is LA and San Diego. They can argue about rights, etc. It also holds half the desert. Central includes Sacramento and San Francisco and the San Joaquin Valley and Delta. Its big enough to argue payment for the various parts funding, and keeps two good roads over the Sierras. Three if you include the southern Route. The Northern section, possibly Jefferson, is the Sacramento Valley starting in Yuba City and up to the Oregon line, covering mostly rural places and no cities with lots of population. Chico might be the biggest city. Yuba City possibly the other. Most of the water is there, but there's enough agriculture need to keep water flowing south.
The problem with most of these is that you first have to get the state population to vote to divide. Then get the support of the congress and senate to agree to this. Which is possible since its been done a few times in history. There is precedent. If you deny access from ports inland, you have to ship around that, and the cost could be prohibitive by rail. The Western coastal counties are just this side of eating their children in a frenzy of violence, and most places in America think that's going a bit far. If they divide from where I live, and then decide to become another country, then block free access through the Bay for "taxes" or "tariffs" to keep their dreams going a little longer before the BBQ sauce runs out on the baby back ribs of cannibalism (because communists always kill their own eventually), if that happens we could see hostile borders, border patrols manned by drones and FLIR sensors, smugglers risking actual death crossing those borders while the commies invite in Mexicans and ISIS terrorists, and us deciding what to do next. PRK is my home. I was born here. I was raised (badly) here. I survived anyway. Dividing the state into two or three makes sense, and if we go for more I can only hope we don't come to blows if the Coasties go mad, as they likely will without water supply. They think everyone else should pay for their lifestyles, which is exactly the argument that makes for Libertarians in the rest of the state.
When I was in High School, I learned how to design houses. I was in the ROP Drafting program. I wanted to go to college and get an architecture degree. This is the sort of skill that should be taught at community colleges, and the tight rein that Architects hold over several kinds of home design only hurts their field. Drafting a home is not very hard work. There are software programs which do it, cheaply. Architecture is not very complicated, and their numbers are limited because they're one of the remaining guilds still extant, and they rob their young of money and talent, taking credit for the work of the young after being mugged themselves during a similar period of exploitation. I learned this around the same time as I was rejected for the major application at Cal Poly, which unofficially was "not accepting white people this year". Racism and sexism for the communist policies of university scum. Duh. This disappointment helped me to become the curmudgeon I am today.
The Uniform Building Code (UBC) is a list of the requirements in a house. They are rules. These are also guidelines written in plain English. You can use them to help you build your house, setup plumbing and wiring, calculate spans for ceilings and floors, and otherwise build a sturdy house. In 1990 you could build a house and half the material cost was the concrete pad, the rest was the lumber etc. Labor costs added onto that. 110 years ago a man could build a house over a summer of weekends and some evenings, and it was perfectly liveable, usually around 800 square feet, with a wall left blank for a future addition when a child is added, the general consequence of marriage.
Building a house on the weekend to prove you have arrived is a longstanding tradition in America, going back for centuries. It is terrible that this is no longer possible due to regulations and bribes and land costs. Housing has become a manufactured crisis which helps create more Democrats. The actual work is trivially easy, and restoring the right to build a house to live in would literally fix most of the problems in our economy.
Quite a few older Craftsman Homes were literally built by young men after graduating high school. The original Craftsman houses predate cars, so have a carriage house out the back, which later got converted to a garage. Back then, the future was Flash Gordon, home electrification, ice boxes, and streetcars. All that got lost by later advances and realization of the costs and failures. However, the benefits of that house design works, if you only have one car and room to park it off the street. A house without a garage dominating the front is a house which looks nice over the long run. Where I live, those Craftsmans sell for only slightly less than a big Victorian, and its better scaled to smaller living. Victorians are big, hard to heat, hard to clean, and have a higher tax rate due to size.
In stick lumber, you build a structural wall using 2x4 inch by 8 foot tall wall using vertical sticks 16 inches apart, with one crosswise stick at the bottom and two overlapping at the top. The roof and ceiling joists go on top of that. Corners sometimes get strapping. Bottom plates sometimes get anchor bolts, though those often go under the floor joist bottom plate so earthquakes can't throw the house off the foundation. These bolts protected millions of homes in the 7.5 quake near Olympia a few years ago. There wasn't much damage because all the houses were built with the expectation of the quake.
Insulation in a house is rated as R followed by a dash and a number. The higher the number, the better the insulation. R-2 is a single pane window. R-19 is the average ceiling. A 2x4 wall doesn't offer much space for insulation, usually R-11 fiberglass. If you want more insulation, you have to use thicker walls or exotic materials for insulation. Some states allow spray foam in the walls, but it burns to cyanide and kills with inhalation so its illegal in many states. Its usually easier to move up to 2x6 exterior walls and thicker fiberglass insulation. That cuts your heating and cooling costs quite a bit. Interior walls don't get insulated often.
The other trick to insulation and cooling is surface area. The more crennelations and bumpouts on the house, the more surface area, the more problems you get with insulation. Beautiful houses with dormer windows are terrible for heating and cooling. They sell well because that sort of thing is stylist. And style costs money.
Big windows are also terrible for insulation. The most expensive kind, with 3 layers and argon gas inside which acts like insulation, only gets you to R-8, which is still much less than the wall next to it. Most people want pictures windows, but most of those windows are looking at a neighbors bedroom or kitchen 10 feet away. Those suck. You can put in obscured (blurry) glass so you can't see out, but the insulation of R-2 or R-4 if double pane, remains. Exotics like glass block turn out to be R-30, but rarely get used properly. They are great for semi-privacy and letting in light, and the vacuum inside prevents the transfer of heat. They are also durable and not particularly expensive, and appropriate in Art Deco and some Craftsman houses. These really ought to be used more often.
Another trick is that while holes in the roof for skylights eventually leak, they can be a great way to light up a home if used correctly and the well is narrow enough but painted while to reflect the light down into the room below. As for insulation, while lots of surface area like crennelations and dormers look really pretty, every bit of exposed area is another place to lose heat. A house looks uninteresting when shaped like a barn, but adjusting its exterior with shapes, color, and textures won't impact its insulation like crennellations do.
A little 2-story bungalow like this Craftsman uses the roof and its large dormers front and rear to break up the visual flow, yet still be energy efficient and retains a chimney. The trick to chimneys is that their flue sucks the heat out of the house and engineering studies prove than an open fireplace cools the house, though this is obviously wrong. Teaching wrong things is exactly the sort of problem which plagues schools today, and should be curtailed. The smart answer to the problem of fireplaces sucking heat out of a home is to use a sealed insert or a wood stove, with an air intake from outside, feeding the fire with fresh oxygen, extract the heat through the walls of the stove, and then venting the remaining fumes outside again. Some clever designs also include a water heater on the back of the stove which circulates around the house to radiators. A modern take on this is a pellet stove or hybrid which can use pellets, firewood, or even sawdust or wood chips. This gets you heat even if the grid goes down temporarily.
A fully modern version with appropriate efficiency makes good sense. Returning the ability of high school graduates to build a home to live in without paying lots of money in bribes (permit fees) also makes sense. It immediately removes all the inflation of home prices, which is a big problem that needs to be dealt with very soon.
In a series of several linked novels I wrote in the 1990's I included a bunch of gun stuff. A bunch of it was wrong. I didn't actually learn to shoot until 2000. Then I learned a LOT of things. Including that I was wrong about many things I'd previously put into my prior writing.
Since then I've been fiddling with theoretical designs and adapting mechanisms, some in the real world and some based on readings, photos, and videos. I even got into various calibers, wildcats included, to try to figure out the appropriate ones for my region, and thus my stories. I eventually came up with some good ideas, but now I'm afraid to post them because there's a lot of scum out there who would use what I invent to hurt people on my side. And that's the trouble with good design. It can be used against you. Even vague descriptions would be useful to the bad guys. This is frustrating.
Even knowing the SBR rules, and the workarounds to a good carbine without breaking that, and the workaround for suppressors using porting and heat shields. And the counterweight piston to create smooth action to reduce felt recoil, and a telescoping bolt, and the trick to fixing both op rod weight and bullpup trigger flex, and forward ejection, and even multistack magazines that work without tumbling. I know how to build all of that. And when I move to another state I will get the license to do so, a Class 3. I'm even reasonably sure I can mod an AR-10 into a bullpup with the above features so I can finally build and shoot 270 ARM. And 6x45 PDW. But I don't want gangers and Islamic murderhoboes having access to them. So I can't build them, to protect us.
I'm probably better off taking most of these skills and applying them to aerogel fiber and weaving machines that will make canvas for car panels and boat parts, and knit for personal bulletproof vests and jerkins (pullover that hangs past the waist). Cheap enough, it will stop rifle bullets and still be comfortable to wear daily. Aerogel is sort of like the polysaccaride in spidersilk, but it is silica, not carbon. It is a wonder material, and really useful for many kinds of vehicle parts. It is safer to distribute in the world. It is harder for gangers to use against me. The ideas I have using these materials would make for a truck camper that weighs half as much. Same with a teardrop trailer, or an A-frame popup trailer.
I have also given real thought to applying these materials to RVs and trailers, upgrading their existing vacation capacity and minimalist living features to something a bit lighter, more portable, and better able to provide utilities for longer while you dry camp (without utility hookups). Most have no suspension, or very primitive suspension. They could go faster if it was better. A really modern suspension could be based on the McLaren MP4-12C, scaled up to the trailer weight. I also thought about applying using that same system to apply lean to the trailer. It wouldn't take much to make it corner better. Finally, I thought about using electric motors to charge a battery onboard and then release it into the wheels to assist in climbing steep mountains.
And how about processing grey water into clean, either for reuse or for dumping (dumping clean isn't harmful). Or using that same grey water into a second stage process into distilled so it is safe. You need lots of solar panel power for that. And you need a serious pack of LIFEPO batteries to hold it.
These are solutions to existing problems. Better answers to the direct confrontation that mostly results in helping evil, and wiping out the best of us.
There is a special kind of freedom in a mobile lifestyle. You don't have to stick around and deal with the fallout from bad public policy when your house has wheels. You also don't have to make excuses when your boss crosses the line and wants you to come with into breaking laws that will see you in jail. Just say no, give notice, and move on. This is the sane response, especially here in the West where the evidence of failed or expired towns are all around us. Poor civic policy or exploited resources are the cause of most of the ghost towns.
I need a house on wheels to avoid getting nailed down to a community doomed to failure. Ever since I left home I was an outsider, and everywhere I go I see the insiders getting a pass on breaking laws, but the outsiders get exploited and discarded like trash. That's just how people are. Its always been an Us vs Them paradigm. So I want a house with wheels to avoid those problems.
If I had the money I would probably own one of these. This is an Airstream Land Yacht. It is pure luxury inside, and they cost around $148K. They are mostly trailer park queens, as they are known, hauled into place and parked for years at a time. They need a seriously powerful truck to haul them. Because of the weight they don't get moved often, so while this is the most luxurious, it doesn't actually make sense for a truly mobile life. And I like the high mountain passes. I like mountains. They have lots of peace and quiet. The lowlander color gangs mostly don't go there.
I think I might enjoy life with the right view, but I keep thinking about certain dirt roads climbing to remote mountain tops, where you get serious peace and quiet.
While I might be able to make a smaller Winnebago work for me, they're really expensive for being a van that sleeps more people than I want, and their kitchen is really too small for my needs. Also, their ground clearance is fine for paved roads but I can't help observing that roads aren't what they used to be. The best mountains do not have paved roads. Quite a few really nice places to visit are on gravel or dirt. For that you sort of need a 6-wheel-drive RV with knobby offroad tires, and a suspension capable of powering up largely non-maintained roads, most of which were made by logging companies for cutting down trees, then turned over to the national forest service. They only keep the roads they can afford, and that's based on budget limitations. The headquarters for the Tahoe National Forest is in Nevada City, down the street from the library where I volunteer. It has a couple satellite offices, one in Sierraville, a town I would love to live in for a summer.
While these really expensive options exist, I'm more inclined towards this shorter Airstream. I think I could pull that much easier, and park in way more kinds of campgrounds. I could also pull it with a bigger SUV (or smaller truck) rather than a huge truck with a loud diesel engine. I realize that diesels have great torque, but very poor torque range, which means they can pull things over mountains at one speed, which isn't so great when you need to speed up and slow down for the curves and hills, etc. From what I have seen, it makes more sense to use either a V8 or a V6 twin turbo powered pickup truck. They have the torque and power to accomplish pulling one of these trailers when it is time to move to a new town, a new campground, or new park. As I said above, I don't want to help people who hurt me, and the surest way to avoid harm is to avoid engagement in the lives of those who pay you. Do your job, get paid, move on.
The Baby Boomers have a problem. They have several, but this specific problem is huge. Most of them know about it. Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme, and its managers don't have enough money to pay for all those retiring onto it. They were counting on my generation being bigger and better employed, so we could pay for those wages, but my generation is less than half the numbers of the Baby Boomers, so the 2:1 ratio of retirees supported by workers is going to 16:1 and later higher numbers. The high Obama-Poverty rate also meant that far fewer workers were paying into the Social Security scam for the whole duration of his tyranny. Most of my generation knows, since 1990, that we'll never see a dime of the Social Security we paid in without a choice. We've been robbed, and the Baby Boomers are bankrupting it. The only good news is that the Baby Boomers aren't going to see all they paid into it. and when they get older they won't see any either, no matter what they vote. I figure 10 years and we'll be unable to bail it out by voting.
The second problem, which is more of a California problem, is all public service workers (teachers, librarians, clerks at the bureaucracy) are screwed. CalPers, which is the single biggest chunk of money in the world was heavily invested in Housing Derivatives. They lost half the fund when it collapsed in 2007. The money remaining is no longer enough to pay the pensions on all those state and county employees because the original fund was based on paying 12 years of pension, at which point they would die at 75. Now people live into their 90's and even 100 years, getting pension all that time. The fund isn't large enough. And the amounts adjust with inflation against minimum wage. Remember that minimum wage is going up to $15/hr by 2022? That's a 50% increase over 4 years ago. That also means the pension payouts have to rise 50% by 2022. That makes them collapse even quicker. The Ponzi Scheme is doomed. The Governor, never one for admitting his own failure when he can party with Hollywood Communists and Billionaires in Silicon Valley, keeps raising taxes to "fix CalPers" but then the money goes to the Bullet Train To Nowhere. This is not good news for all those public employees. Their unions are bought and paid for, so do nothing. Most estimates predict 6 cents on the dollar invested. 6% return on their investment is terrible failure. That's 94% loss. All those public employees, much like the Bonus Army in 1932, may choose to protest, and they'll get maced, tased, and arrested for "unlawful assembly", the current crime for using the First Amendment. Socialists don't like being mocked for failure. All these old guys are going to be looking at terrible poverty in their final years of life. They served, possibly not well, but served California, and they're about to get screwed.
Realistically, we are looking at a future where the things we enjoy now we won't be able to afford for much longer. We're going to learn to get by with library books instead of TV shows, with walks and bicycle trips instead of vacations by air. We're all going to be eating government cheese and getting a lot thinner. And we'll pretend its okay, but it really won't be. Part of the reason that older people don't transfer power to my generation running the businesses they founded is they can't believe that the economy sucks, or that the methods they used 40 years ago don't work anymore. So when we manage them under the modern laws and taxes, they complain we're doing it wrong. Then they retake control, FAIL HARD, and the business collapses. They give up, sell off, and we're out those dozen or hundred jobs because Boomer Senility is responsible. Its very hard to make new jobs and businesses thanks to all the regulations created by Boomers to limit competition. They are the Worst Generation, after all.
Work till you die. About the only good news here is when you move on to another town, you can escape a lot of taxes that enable the survival of those who caused this apocalypse. We don't have teepees. We have Winnebagos and Airstreams, but the movement of Natives isn't just the immigrants from 10,000 years ago. Its those from the last two centuries, too.
We all gotta make a living. For 8 years we've had a terrible economy, lost a bunch of wars, saw a huge increase in domestic terror attacks, and laws haven't been imposed properly to the point that even the FBI is now in ethical trouble. The voters spoke and we got a major change in management. The stock market response was to rise 3000 points, up 300 today alone. The economy is improving because the Democrats aren't in charge anymore. That is really important. Democrats were hurting everyone, and most of them have to be wondering if they're voting for the wrong side. Some will switch to republican, but lots more won't. So what are their options?
Fed up voters should really think about third parties. There are several worth knowing about.
The Libertarian Party is sort of right wing, but not exactly. They're opposed to taxes, being controlled, and telling other people what to do. They are in favor of drugs, freedom, and personal responsibility. There's several famous examples of Libertarianism. Libertarians also don't wait for the police to show up with the chalk: they have guns to defend themselves. So libertarians are all NRA members and heavily armed, but not hostile. They just want to be left alone and look after themselves.
If you want dope intoxication, living in Washington state, Colorado, California and Oregon are legal for recreational dope. You don't need to vote. Just relocate. Every conceivable type of weather is available in those states. Pick the one you can live with. In 30 years the Green Party failed to get dope legal. That happened by popular state votes, not the Green Party.
The Green Party also claims to be about protecting the environment but seems to do no actual work. They complain, but they don't build or clean up rivers. They could be motivated to DO THINGS instead of just complain about them if new people took over. The Sierra Club helps a little, but not as much as they fundraise to hold more fundraisers. Their former president lives about 8 miles from here, in a wild animal preserve, which is borderline illegal and totally hypocritical.
There is also the Peace and Freedom party, which is diametrically opposed to Democrat policies of oppression and murder. This might be a good choice for those who voted for the wrong people while holding their noses. Don't hold your nose. Vote for a party that you can morally support.
Bernie is the face of communism in America today: addled, lost, unable to explain how to pay for anything, and has never held a paying job in his life. Much like modern Hippies, who at least want to look after themselves, socialism and communism are death cults. They have little to do with reality, and prior examples, and the millions who died in each, are poignant reminders of what they really become.
One of the nearly-free-standing Discworld novels by Sir Terry Pratchett, humorist and folklorist author is Monstrous Regiment. It is the story of women going to war. Most are young, all are ugly and easily mistaken for boys, and their nation is losing the war. Most join the army to find missing family or lovers, or just to get away from the horrors at home. It being Discworld it is also comedy, and has monsters, and references wars on Earth. The style of war is similar to Napoleon, only before guns, so they're at the level of pikemen and crossbows. The comedy is largely along the lines of hiding by thin disguise and acting like the other gender, and people being Shakespearean level of dumb. Its an enjoyable book and surprisingly tender on the subject of civil rights, and the cruel stupidity of bad religion.
