[RE]

#2 applies here as in hey man, if I gotta move north so be it. #3, It doesn't matter, is also sort operative here in that it is subjective ie, I don't own coastal real estate. Rather than OMG hair on fire megaphoning from a soapbox I entertain myself looking at maps and speculating on what goes under, how it may affect populations of animals (including humans) etc. Being interested is different from "caring". After all, I'm just killing time 'till time kills me.

So basically what you are saying is that since these effects don't appear to directly affect you and your life, they don't matter to you and you don't care about it very much because of that.

There are however secondary effects and repurcussions that will affect you, and much more affect your son who you cared enough about to pick up and move to find a decent school where he might learn something.

You may not own real estate on the coast, but millions of people do and as various disasters hit their stretch of coastline or their valley which flash floods from an atmospheric river or wildfire, they'll become more homeless refugees some of who will end up pitching tents around your neighborhood where the parks will then become either unsafe or at least unpleasant to picnic at with all the refuse and piles of human feces and the smell of stale urine  under the shade of the tree you liked to set up by.

Even if you don't get this particular blowback in your neighborhood because it's one of the ones with all the big houses with an HOA that employs private security to patrol and the cops  sweep away the homeless, you don't care because you don't empathize with their plight?

If I have a maxim I live by, it was expressed best by John Donne:



or more completely MEDITATION 17


PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

RE

[RE]

Son is going to buy a hacienda in Mexico or Ecuador in the next couple of years with a nice little Abuela Cassita in back so I can raise goats and turnips again. No, I don't give a flying fuck about 'merica as it is today, and if shtf before we escape, East Flannel Oregon is as good a place for a heavily armed white motherfucker like me to stand ground on as anyplace I can think of.

I'm an Epictetus fan, myself.

Given the fairly rapid progress of global cooking and the fact running A/C in countries with energy deficit will be problematic,  I'm not sure it's the best location for a retirement casita.

Far as Epictetus is concerned, I'm not sure the things he classifies as in our control really are, and the ones he labels not can always be ignored.  So it's not a real clear cut division.  What are the "lesser" things not to be carried away with?  At what point is something important enough to care about, even if it's not in your control?  Property may not be in your control nor is taxation, but if your taxes are raised, the tendency is to care about that.  Few people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.  Particularly when the taxes are used to fund something also not in their control that they don't agree with.

RE

[RE]

I am at peace.

Nonsense.  You're only at peace because currently the taxman's cut doesn't constitute an existential threat.  Once it does, the only way you'll be at peace is dead.  You either have to rebel and not pay up or you'll die.

A similar strategy is that of the ascetic or monk who takes a vow of poverty.  If you're OK with having nothing but subsistence level shelter and food, you're free of the taxman because of math.  Even a 100% tax can't touch you, because 100% of 0 is still 0.  Knarf here chose the monastic life, although it's not necessary to be at zero income here in the FSoA, simply low enough to be below the poverty line.  I have also done this for the last 25 years, keeping my income threshhold just below where once I took the standard deduction, I either owed $0 or I got an annual tax return, usually in the neighborhood of about $500.  My income from SS and my pension comes to just $80 less than the maximum allowed by Medicaid to be eligible for that.  For the 10 years prior to that I only worked part time, about 25 hours a week to keep myself at the poverty line.

However, you can't go lower than this and still not care and be at peace.  If you're homeless, even if you're OK with living in a tent, the Gestapo won't let you do that, they'll show up one day and toss it in the dumpster.  I've never had to face homelessness, the closest I came was after my divorce.    I had my mom to fall back on though and ended up moving back home with her, after 6 months living in my van while I worked 2 jobs and worked on my Master's.  I slept in the van and showered at the university gym.

Doomsteading is another method, but as you noted the schools out in the boonies ain't so great, so if you CARE about your kid's education, you gotta quit on it and move somewhere.  This was in the sphere of something you could control, but you weren't at peace because your kid wasn't learning anything.

Stripping yourself down to be able to be at peace and be happy with just what you NEED rather than all the things you WANT is fairly difficult to do.  You wanted a good education for your kid, but it wasn't an existential threat.  You could have stayed on the Doomstead and homeschooled.

Anyhow, no biggy, we all compromise sometimes on our philosophy.  Despite my Jonne Donne philosophy,there's a certain point at which I stop caring about a homeless person.  After enough years on the street, drug addicted and alcoholic, he's beyond salvation.  Kids in my 9th grade Physical Science class who couldn't do basic math and busied themselves disrupting the class fit into people I stopped caring about also.  Nobody's Perfect, even Jesus.  He got ticked off enough to throw over the tables of the banksters.  He didn't have infinite patience. lol.

RE

[RE]

Anyone who thinks taxes are an existential threat needs to harden the fuck up.

Currently here in America, they're not.  However, in many societies over the millenia, the land owner would set the tax rate so high that when the harvest came in, after you paid the Crown its tax and the Tithe charged by the Church, there wasn't enough grain left over for the family to eat.  You'd end up eating the seed corn and not have enough to plant the next season.  Particularly if the King was at war and the treasury was bankrupt this would happen.

Few people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.

I said I was, and gave you specific reasons why taxation never bugged me. And then you dismiss it as "nonsense". I'm putting you on "ignore" for the rest of the month. I don't have a cooler button.

Well, now you know why we have the cooler.   Sometimes you just don't want to deal with somebody who won't buy what you are selling.  I can't just ignore people because the Diner is my responsibility.   So when I need a break from what that person is trying to sell, I turn them off for a few days.  But you are free to ignore me, I have no problem with that.

RE

[Surly1]

https://poweringautos.com/is-the-smoke-from-a-lithium-ion-battery-harmful/

Info on the smoke.

Holy shit. Don't get caught downwind.

[Surly1]

Quote from: comrade simba on Jan 22, 2025, 06:11 PM
    I am at peace.

Nonsense.  You're only at peace because currently the taxman's cut doesn't constitute an existential threat.  Once it does, the only way you'll be at peace is dead.  You either have to rebel and not pay up or you'll die.

Anyone who thinks taxes are an existential threat needs to harden the fuck up.

Few people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.

I said I was, and gave you specific reasons why taxation never bugged me. And then you dismiss it as "nonsense". I'm putting you on "ignore" for the rest of the month. I don't have a cooler button.

.


Boy, this thread is vintage RE. I told you what I was, I told you why, and then you turned around and called it nonsense. From the Greatest Hits collection.

[RE]

Boy, this thread is vintage RE. I told you what I was, I told you why, and then you turned around and called it nonsense. From the Greatest Hits collection.

I try to stay consistent. 

RE