[RE]

my kid needed better schools than podunk missouri had to offer.

Did you actually find someplace that had public schools that actually educate?

Non crazy people who find themselves jobless, penniless and homeless can also get a break from a hopeless situation and voluntarily sign up for a six month stint of farm labor with job placement assistance at end of term. Good option for women with kids needing some safety and a fresh start.

This actually already sorta exists in a NGO sorta way.  WWOOFers sign up to work on Organic Farms world-wide in return for room & board and a small monthly stipend.  The WWOOF website and organization matches up people looking to leave the rat race to work on a farm.  Not sure how many homeless organizations are aware of this and use it to place people.  Seems like it would be a good way to address at least part of the problem.

RE

[RE]

I'm familiar with Neosho, I lived for a few years in the major metro of SW MO, Springfield.  I'm a tad surprised that you found the HS there to be good, since I found the ones in Springfield to be pretty awful.  Then again, I do know that a HS in the Ozarks is a mighty low bar and anything would be up from that.  My advice to everyone nowadays is to homeschool, especially if you're Doomsteading.  The internet provides all the resources you need, even if you don't have an extensive post HS education yourself.

I don't think we'll see a return of cowboys recruited from the ranks of the homeless, not so much due to the hard work involved as the fact cattle ranching whether organic or industrial farm style is outrageously water and energy intensive.  However, if they were trained in raising mealworms and grasshoppers or fishfarming Tilapia, there probably will be demand for people to do that labor.

RE

[RE]

There will be a certain percentage of homeless that aren't permanently crippled by drug use and truly horrid upbringing - the second generation homeless people I have come across might be okay for picking fruit. Not too far a cry from collecting cans. (groan)

You make a very important point about the creation of a new level of underclass, 2^nd Generation homeless, the children of formerly working or middle class who are growing up bouncing through failing schools as their parents are bounced from one temporary housing situation to the next.  Similar of course to kids in the foster care system who also get bounced from one foster family to the next who have the additional issues with substandard foster parents who often do that just for the money they get from the state to care for kids.  They are not much different from people who run the many small Assisted Care Living homes for old folks.  In fact the people who ran the Gulag that I was stuck in for 7 months started before that raising foster kids and did well financially at both endeavors, with a nice retirement home in Mexico they spend a few months a year at while they leave an older woman manager running the ACL they pay $25/hr running the place with her sociopathic husband.

However, you really have to broaden it, because schools are failing so broadly across the country that even if parents haven't actually gone homeless, we have a generation growing up now where more than 50% of the kids are getting virtually no education who also have virtually no hope of getting a decent job when they hit 18 and get kicked out of the education system with a piece of paper that says nothing more than they successfully survived being warehoused in a public school for 13 years.
 

I built a campervan out of a Promaster for my retirement gift to myself and the wife and I travel all over the country in between visiting the furniture in Klamath-Falls Oregon. I see mile after mile of grievously mismanaged pasture everywhere we go. Have you read any of Joel Salatin's cattle raising books/literature?  I'm betting at least half the acreage irrigated for hay destined for feedlots would be more profitable for grass fed beef, and use a 1/4 of the water, zero fertilizer/herbicide, and a comparatively minuscule amount of fuel. And nothing begs goats like the strip between roadway and fence row on any highway in america. Fuck john deer tractor sales. "Me and Julio runnin goats down the median"

I'm not knowledgeable in the area of permaculture and sustainable agriculture methods and haven't read the canon of books by guys like Salatin that Doomsteaders use as a Bible settng up their Doomsteads.  I did interview quite a few of them though over the years, so I picked up a little knowledge from my discussions with them.

There's no doubt that land use has been thoroughly mismanaged for the whole trip down the collapse highway of the automobile culture.  You can go back to the famous line from Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi", Pave Paradise & put up a Parking Lot.  Fabulous Ag land all over the country has fallen to strip malls, subdivisions and urban sprawl over the last 50 years, and reclaiming it will be  an essential aspect of survival for any people who survive the Zero Point of collapse.  However, all that asphalt has poisoned a lot of the land, and even just ripping it up is going to take generations.  I don't think it will be quite as simple as herding goats down the median of the Interstate Highways.

RE

[K-Dog]

What new offwhite swan wonders are in store that that remain hidden from lack of knowledge and/or confirmation bias?

Not many if any. Offwhite is the reason. 

Each swan is a player in the substitution game.  Conventional oil that in the early days was even artesian was replaced by a new swan that required fracking rock first and using drill rigs an order of magnitude more complex.  This new fracking swan is a dirtier shade of white.  Not quite as good or pure. 

So then imagine the next white swan.  If it is oil based it will be a darker yet shade of gray.  No longer a white swan.  Declining EROEI makes it a dirty grey swan.

Knowledge and confirmation bias.  The world is described by mathematical relationships, and within these relationships, there is only so much possibility.  A possibility that in reality is far short of what a Marvel Comic superhero can accomplish.  Conservation of mass/energy and thermodynamics puts limits on what is possible. 

That is not a confirmation bias, that is a fact.

*  And Trump is not yet sworn in.  Facts still mean something.

[K-Dog]

The same reason people would take the published work of M. K. Hubbert and say he was absolutely right when those charts of his certainly don't look anything like the actual results?

That would be nobody here.  You trapped yourself.

Hubbert predates your 'peak oilers' by about fifty years.  Everybody knows Hubbersts data is dated.  To not see that as fact would be simply stupid.  Therefore MKH has only ever been acknowledgedin a qualitative way,  and not in the quantitative way you claim.  What you claim is logically impossible.

[K-Dog]

Neosho at that time (2020ish) was an outlier for the area. We got lucky squeaking in through the last generation of well educated classes. It has gone to shit since that time.

I found this: Central Campus

A white buffalo of a school district.  Something perhaps that survived from the days when public schools were good.  Once they were if you lived in the right place.  Thankfully I did.

[RE]

Hahahaha - The Neosho Central Campus is the cooler for problem students. It does however get the trash out of the regular classrooms so that actual learning can take place. That's the idea anyway.

That's a slightly different description than how they self-describe in Education Speak on their website:

The Neosho Central Campus, formerly known as Jefferson Street Campus, is dedicated to providing a safe place for students to thrive in an academic setting that is rigorous, interactive and meaningful. It has successfully served at-risk students since the 1996-1997 school year. Students who are at-risk of graduating are identified and referred through teachers, counselors, and administration of Neosho's main campus. Central Campus is home to five certified teachers who, with great heart and dedication, meet the educational needs of 50 students at any given time. Vacated seats on the Central Campus are filled immediately, as there is a waiting list. The enrollment process requires guardian and student participation with the understanding that students will experience stricter discipline policies along with higher attendance and grade expectations.

I'd be fascinated to know what they call academically rigorous?  I wonder also what they pay the 5 lucky teachers who deal with the trash?  With only 50 kids in the program also, that's a 10:1 ratio.  That's amazing use of resources even by Special Ed standards.  How many kids total in the regular HS program?  What do they do with the kids on the waiting list?

RE

[K-Dog]

The entertainment in Maya's Funhouse / Hall of Mirrors is watching what we clever little monkeys will come up with next!

The point is the monkeys got too clever.



Now we don't have enough shit.

[K-Dog]

I'd be fascinated to know what they call academically rigorous?  I wonder also what they pay the 5 lucky teachers who deal with the trash?  With only 50 kids in the program also, that's a 10:1 ratio.  That's amazing use of resources even by Special Ed standards.  How many kids total in the regular HS program?  What do they do with the kids on the waiting list?

RE

Yes, interesting.  One page from the school district's website.  Flim flam, or the tip of a great iceberg. Inquiring minds want to know.

[TDoS]

The same reason people would take the published work of M. K. Hubbert and say he was absolutely right when those charts of his certainly don't look anything like the actual results?

That would be nobody here.  You trapped yourself.

Really? Well, I have been known to be wrong before, and probably have trapped myself before, but how about a demonstration as to why it hasn't happened on THIS topic?

Therefore MKH has only ever been acknowledgedin a qualitative way,  and not in the quantitative way you claim.  What you claim is logically impossible.

I present....Hubbert happily doing the logically impossible quantatative representation of US oil production.
Reference:Hubberts 1956 Paper - Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels
Figure 21.


For an encore...Hubbert doing the impossible....a second time! For the world!



Yes K-Dog, Hubbert did quantatatively list his thoughts on VOLUMES of oil for the US and world. And they are both really, really, wrong.

Bigly.

Anything else we want to learn today?

[K-Dog]

Yes K-Dog, Hubbert did quantatatively list his thoughts on VOLUMES of oil for the US and world. And they are both really, really, wrong.

Bigly.

Anything else we want to learn today?

You are in the cooler for 24 hours for being an idiot.  You posted something that was drawn 75 years ago and you presented it as absolute fact.  Deliberate obfuscation violates Diner rules.

[RE]

You are in the cooler for 24 hours for being an idiot.

Only 24 hours?  You are very lenient. lol.

RE

[RE]

I don't do much arguing... I'll just ask K-Dog if he thinks population will continue to rise. I figure it has topped out at 8 billion, with no way of knowing how long it will plateau there. Knowing where someone stands on an issue is numero uno for dialogue.

Argument is a regular feature of the Diner.  Generally we have strong opinions and we tend to defend them vigorously when a contrary opinion is expressed.

I'm not answering for Kdog, but I'm pretty sure we have a similar opinion. Globally, we are probably still increasing population, but barely.  Fertility rates are dropping everywhere, so growth will probably turn negative within the decade.  Population will then begin dropping slowly until we hit a systemic bump that interferes with food production or distribution, or a global pandemic, or global warfare either between countries or multiple civil wars and revolutions.  Then there will be a rapid population drop 20% or more over a couple of years.  10-20 years at the outside IMHO.

]I know when I'm wrong... I can't know for sure when someone else is. If I'm wrong that doesn't make the opposite correct... both may be wrong. Fuckin' swans :-D

If you know when you are right and  the other person holds the opposite view, then you know he is wrong.  Do you know when you're right?

Hubbert's graph peaks at 12.5 billion barrels a year. He just stopped the upward slope of the bell curve too soon. The real thing to be argued is when the top of the curve is / will be reached. I personally figure the west's reserves will decline (frak magic no more) at the same rate arctic/Russian oil will come on line. Decay in the west, progress in the ROW for a generation (13 - 20 years)

Tdos is obsessed with demonstrating Hubbert and everyone else who predicted Peak Oil and collapse was wrong.  So he quibbles over timeline issues that have been predicted.  As things turned out, extend and pretend has kept BAU sputtering along the last 15 years, causing many people to believe we'll figure a way out of a crash.  My opinion is it has just been delayed, and right now we see things starting to spin out of control again and an acceleration of the political, economic, climate and energy problems that will at some point reach critical mass.  Exactly when is hard to pinpoint, so putting a timeline on it is tough.  The main question these days since most of us here are geriatrics is whether rapid unravelling will happen before we ourselves are pushing up daisies.  Not real important though, since whether it happens in 10 years or 50, it's coming.

RE

[RE]

I try to keep three maxims in mind:

I don't know.
I don't care.
It doesn't matter.

Interesting set of maxims to live by.  I'm not in this club, as anyone who has read my material for a while knows.  Let me address them each in turn.

#1- I don't know.

What is knowable and what is not?  Can you know that 1+1=2?  If a tree falls in the forest and you weren't there, can you know if it made a sound?  If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, do you know it's a duck?  You could make philosophical arguments that show you can't know these things for sure, but my POV is they all reach my test of being beyond reasnable doubt.  So my POV is I know them as true, and you would need to present some really good arguments to convince me otherwise.

Of course, most things aren't quite so clear cut, but for every question out there, at a certain point I have enough evidence to make my own determination of the truth, and that's what I know.  To change my mind, you have to present arguments that show me why I am wrong.  I'm always interested to hear such arguments and examine them.  At least as long as the arguments are presented respectfully without insults, obfuscation, ad hom attacks, strawmen, appeals to authority and bad faith.  There are other things people will do in an argument to get it off track too, but those are the main ones I don't tolerate.

The Diner is supposed to be a place where people with a genuine interest in topics related to the collapse of industrial civilization can present their viewpoints and discuss them, in the effort to ferret out The Truth from the vast quantity of misinformation ejaculated on the net.  So I welcome members who enjoy telling me what they know also.  Then we can compare the differences to get a better understanding and hopefully get closer to the truth.  At the end of the process, hopefully everyone knows a little more than when we began.

#2 I Don't Care

I have spent the last 15 years digging into this subject and written reams  of material to examine what is going on.  You don't spend that much time on something you don't care about.  Kdog also has spent a long time immersed in the topic, he cares about it also.  It's probably the most important question of our time, so it's hard for m to understand how so many people don't care about it.

#3  It doesn't matter

If the future of the planet and of the civilization of homo saps doesn't matter, what does?  We may just be a fly speck in the universe and when we're gone nobody will be around to care, but WE ARE THE FLIES.  So what happens does matter to us.  Does what we say here matter?  Well, since so few people read it, it doesn't matter to the vast majority of the global population, but it DOES matter to those of us who are members of this flyspeck on the internet on the flyspeck of the planet.  If the Diner doesn't matter to you, why bother spending time chatting here?

RE

[TDoS]

You are in the cooler for 24 hours for being an idiot.  You posted something that was drawn 75 years ago and you presented it as absolute fact.  Deliberate obfuscation violates Diner rules.

Jesus K-Dog you've got to be kidding.

While I understand that in this place I am stuck with the audience I got, I've taken EE classes and I know damn well people who can do that can at least THINK.

You asked for something and I damn well provided it. Hubbert's graphs of US and World oil ARE quantatative, and they are absolute fact, published in science journals, and his estimates are his estimates and if you don't like them that's fine. But you ASKED for his quantative and I provided it.

You don't like him having drawn them up in 1956? Not my problem. You don't like that those quantatative numbers don't match reality? Not my problem. He drew his line in the sand, and it worked in the US, through 1970. And then one day it didn't. This isn't political theory and relative concepts....he posts volumes and years. Compare those for the US or World to reality and there is only one conclusion that can be drawn. Once you get there, you can then "but but but" all you'd like, any way you'd like.