bluGill

I have about 6 hours of mind work in me per day. To fill up an 8 hour day I need to have 2 hours of meetings. I don’t know how anyone can do 10 much less 12. Those long days work for mindless labor where you are just putting pegs in holes but if I need to think I can’t do long days.

If you trust them. Where I live the bar chooses the person on the ballot and we only get a up or down. Thus any evaluation they do is by definiton a conflict of interest.

Better than voting for who looks the best on TV, or any of the other ways people vote without being fully informed. I’m sometimes forced to leave sections blanks because I cannot find anything about the candidates (I don’t know why my state vote on judges, the only way to find out if they any are good is to spend 100% of your time in court rooms, reading decisions, and so on all year)

In theory yes, but in practice no. Before we used fossil fuels (say 1000 years ago) the earth was on a slight cooling trend because a little organic matter still gets converted to coal. I can’t find the amount, but IIRC it was something like enough for -0.1C every thousand years. That number is so small that even a tiny amount of fuel use would keep us even.

If it is rare enough and you don’t have an emergency that is the right thing. Odds are the rest of your city doesn’t have the ability to deal with those temperatures and so you going out will make things harder for emergency workers who must get out. If your city deals with this often then everyone will know how to deal with it and expect you to deal with it. You cannot shutdown your life for something that happens every single year, but if it is just a day or two every 5 years it isn’t worth being knowing how to deal with it other than the minimum emergency needs (that is make sure your HVAC system at home can handle it)

You still need resistive heat as heatpumps don’t work below about -20C and those temperatures happen to at least some car buyers.

The world is not a zero sum game. that alone defeats your premis-

Build where? if in us ports the us will cliam it- if you bring stuff out to sea they will claim it because of the stuff.

it comes down to taxes. They want you to pay. Thus they will doeenerything they can to decide it is theirs.

As for being a pirate. The us constitution allows letters of marque which is permission to be a pirate against specific against vessels of some country. the last one was 1815 so good luck getting one but theoretically you could.

The marine hymn ‘the shores of Tripoli’ refers to a marine battle to stop Libya from issuing letters of marque against us vessels. I believe nealy all old time pirates were registered with Libya operating under a letter of marque and not the storybook idea of stateless ships doing what they want. (anyone enough of a historian to verify)

registration is not about the flag. You are still registered in the us even I you have a french flag up. if you claim to be frence without properly registerng with france (i have no clue how you would do this properly) that is misrepresentation and france would (could) send an internanional warrant to the us and have you arrested since you are still us registered by default.

even if you don’t register with the us you are considered US - you just broke the law by not regestering (paying taxes) and so us law applies.

when a ship is registered in panama there is a company in panama that buys the ship and then because they are a panama company the country that the previous owners were in allows the sale and thus registration. Of course the owners of the panama company are a company in a different country.

I doubt you could find an unregistered vessel. Maybe sealand. If you pirate a registered vessel the navies of the world will hunt you down.

You can maybe stretch that 4 hours to several days. However you must get enough solar in 4 hours to provide more than 1 day of use. You will probably get to 6-8 hours of production from your panels, but the production is reduced in the off hours and there are almost always a few clouds reducing your output even at peak times so until proved otherwise just count on 4 hours. (prove can be several years worth of data, or careful local climate calculation possibly with various devices to handle the sun moving)

That depends. If you declare you are not registered at all that makes you an illegal pirate with no protection at all. If someone else with a yacht decides to sink yours that is probably legal for them - if you fight back they can call their navy to defend them. Regardless of who their yacht is flagged under calling their navy for help probably means they asked the nearest navy (which is almost always the US navy - even if the US hates the country in question the US doesn’t want the seas to be a free for all and will come) to help.

If you become self sufficient out there probably nobody will care and you can be there for years no problem. Just don’t cause problems and nobody really cares. However if you cause problems expect issues. If one person on your yacht steals from another that is your business, nobody will get involved. If someone steals from someone with a country that country will get involved to protect their own. If kids are born on the yacht they might not have a country which could make life hard (particular as the yacht gets old and is no longer safe!). If you have kids born and then sexually abuse them several countries (in particular the US with their large navy) have declared that illegal anywhere and so they will come in to stop you.

The hard part is to become flagless in the first place. What every country you set out from will just assume the boat has their flag by default. They generally won’t let you choose to take it off - they will let you sell it to someone in a different country and then change the flag, but there is nobody with no country who can take ownership of it. Maybe a lawyer can find a work around, but it will not be easy.

Libera, Panama, and Marshall Islands must be pretty convenient since those are countries most ships get registered.

The people register ships care about minimum wage (none), taxes (low), and other such things. They want laws about murder in case the staff turns on the company.

How reliable do you need to be - https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ often goes offline because there wasn’t enough sun to keep their servers up - would this be acceptable for your servers? (you should spend a lot of time on that website when it is up - it will teach you more than anyone else here)

Will you allow yourself to plug in the backup if there isn’t much sun for a few days (either yourself or some automatic system) - just the ability to go 20 hours on battery and enough solar to recharge the battery in 4 hours on a sunny day would get most people to 90% solar and will be a lot cheaper than chasing to 100% solar all the time - but that might not be good enough for you.

The general rule of thumb if you never can go down is you need to be able to run for 2 weeks without any sun, and enough solar to then recharge those batteries when there is 4 hours of full sun. Of course the weather where you live makes a difference. If you live in the desert your worst possible day will always be followed by a day where you can completely recharge the battery so you need much less batteries; while those who live in arctic locations will not get any sun for a couple months and so need a lot more storage.

Depends. I went to a exurb elementary school and it didn’t need a fence - walk through the woods until you get bored. However I’ve also seen schools where there is a busy road nearby and they need something to stop the kids that would run that way. (older kids would not, but very young will run without looking and a few special needs kids have no sense of what is safe)

You need enough of a nest egg in case you live to 130 - but odds are you will live to just under 80 like everyone else so that should be the majority of your planning. (unless you have a specific family history/genetics).

There is probably a copy shop near you that will let you scan something for a few bucks. Well worth twiceithe price just for access to high end equipment.

I’m assuming you are young - under 30. If older my advice will be different.

save 10% for retirement and spend the rest of your income ‘now’. Save for a house and other big things but make sure you have fun with life. don’t buy so much of a house that you can’t do whatever you enjoy after paying for it. Take vacations now. climb mountains now if that is what you want to do - at 50 you will likely be forced give up mountain climbing. I strongly recomnend you get married and have kids (this isn’t for everyone but I still recommend it)

make sure you have a good long term disabilitty plan. insurance costs are based on how likely you are to need it. If someone offers you a deal on insurance run away as it is a scam. If someone trias to sell you expensive insurance it might be expensive because odds are you need it so listen carefully (there are expensive scams and some insurance you won’t need but others do so I don’t say buy, just listen)

several of those I graduated with are dead and I’m not retired yet - several of us have been unable to work for medical reasons (treatable but the treatment takes time). I’ve knowen a fair number who planed to enjoy retirement but either their health kept them in or near a hospital once they reached that age; or they died just after retireing. so 10% saved for retirement and then find something in life you enjoy for the rest and spend it. If you are older and didn’t start with 10% then you may need to save more., if you save more than 10% make sure it is because you couldn’t think of anything to spend it not that you are a miser who saves every last penny.

Edit: you should have some emergency savings. Emergencies happen when the s&p is down so this should be short term ‘safe’ investments. 6 months should be enough.

Always follow yourdoctors advice. There is a lot of snake oil out there that sounds good but will kill you.

But caling tevas gets you in touch with someone else who can arrange with the rest of the world to get things you need.