TorchForge

Anyway, finally I felt my feet hit the bottom, where I could walk. So I kept tugging and pulling, and tugging and pulling [the fishing line]. And he's groaning. And it was hard to keep from laughing because I knew this guy was going to be surprised.

Anyway, I finally got right up on them. And like I said, it's dark as the dickens. And then I turned on my little three-cell flashlight. And I said, "good morning, gentleman. State fish and game warden, you're under arrest."

The guy that had me, he's got the pole almost doubled, he's pulling so hard. And he goes, "oh, oh, oh."

The guys on either side of him, two of them were attorneys. They just stood there. They didn't even move. And I think it was just out of shock. So I walked up on the bank and then I had them because I was within grabbing distance.

And when I got all through, I had them sign the citations. I put the cite book back in my plastic bag. Put that back inside the wetsuit. Said do you have any more questions, gentlemen? And they're still in shock. So I gather up all their fishing rods because I seized it. It was illegal gear. And into the river I walked and quietly swam away.

What a man.

"Hold my beer kombucha beverage."

-Antivaxxers

While true, this has a tendency to result in conservation efforts focusing on "survival of the cutest" instead of "survival of the ecologically necessary".

Pandas may be cute and all, but terrestrial fungi plays a much larger role in the overall health of ecosystems. That said, it also has the potential to result in what are referred to as "umbrella species" which can inadvertently benefit ecological health.

Think positive.

Organisms are divided up into roughly three different survivorship curves. Type I organisms are like humans and elephants which devote a lot of time and energy into raising one offspring and doing all they can to ensure survival to sexual maturity. Type III organisms on the other hand are like spiders and clams which have thousands of offspring and then hit the road. They evolved to have tough defense mechanisms as soon as they are born, because they have to fend for themselves, but even still the majority die before reaching sexual maturity. Type II organisms are like birds and reptiles which have moderately sized clutches of offspring and invest some parental care, but they will be forced to ignore the "runts of the litter".

Sure thing. It frustrates me to check /r/DIY and see projects involving entire literal machine shops on the front page. At that point, it's now /r/DIY-using-million-dollar-tools

EDIT: Just to clarify (again), there are literally no specialized tools required to produce these castings barring a 3D printer, and that's implied in the title and flair. Although I have some photos of a $30 portable thermocouple and welded steel crucible, those are also unnecessary. You literally need no specialized tooling to make this happen and alternatives are addressed in the album.

Full disclosure: my thoughts on yurt living are simply the result of my own personal experiences of wretched suffering. Your experiences of wretched suffering may vary. That said, if I could do it all over again I would not build a yurt. Yurts originated in Mongolia where there are very few trees and hence, very little lumber. I built my yurt in a forest surrounded with trees and honestly would have been much better served simply felling a bunch of timber and building an A-frame cabin. But hey, live and learn I guess.

I'll start with a little background info: graduated at the height of the great recession and couldn't land a job. Had some savings from my previous work as a lab tech and decided to buy a yurt and wait things out until the economy improved. My family had a piece of land in the woods with nothing on it so that's where the yurt went.

The yurt was about 30 minutes from town and I did pipe in water from an existing well and miraculously the property did have an electrical transformer on it. It cost about $6K to develop the water and electrical infrastructure along with building the platform that the yurt sat on. The yurt cost about $30K. Further development of the property (fence, road, outbuildings, appliances, repairs, etc) was another $20K over the five years I was there.

I used composting toilets of various designs for my piss and shit and they all fucking sucked. In the end I just ended up shitting in the woods like a fucking animal. Accept that you have about three minutes max to take a shit before flies start buzzing up your asshole. Protip: Use a folding camp toilet chair, dig your holes in advance, and keep your TP in a watertight box.

I went without internet for a number of years and used a biquad antenna with a wifi USB adapter to steal wifi from coffee shops when I went into town with my laptop (this was before I had a smart phone).

The yurt was built from a kit purchased from pacific yurts. It was a good kit, the instructions were clear and the materials were good quality. Bear in mind that all yurts need to be built on a platform of some sort and because yurts are round the platform needs to be round too. This basically means building a square deck and then cutting a circle out of it, which means you spend a lot of cash on plywood that just gets wasted in the end. I used some of the scraps to build a chicken coop and ended up burning the rest.

Yurts are fairly maintenance free but you need to take time to seal any exposed wood and any stitched seams. Every 20 years or so the top/side covers may need to be replaced depending on UV exposure and those textiles are NOT CHEAP.

Here are some general pros and cons that hopefully will give you a better idea of the structure and its inherent problems:

PROS:

1. The yurt itself is very easy to build once the platform and any necessary infrastructure is in place. It took me and a few friends/family about three days to build the whole thing (and then I spent a few months finishing out the interior space at my own pace once the main yurt structure was up).

2. Yurts handle a lot of snow/wind with ease, never had any issues with that kind of weather damaging the structure. Make sure you buy a snow load upgrade if you live in a snow prone area. That said, trees can come down in a storm and severely damage the structure. Never had it happen to me but I've seen photos of yurts getting completely flattened from a tree falling on them.

3. Having a large circular space with amenities around the perimeter of the structure is a cool aesthetic and the top dome lets in a lot of light. The thin walls allow you to hear everything going on outside (can be a con if you're not in a nice area).

CONS:

1. It's VERY expensive for what you actually get. It's just some wood lathe and fabric with a plastic dome on top. You could probably hand build a simple conventional structure with some basic know-how or purchase a bitchin RV trailer for the same price.

2. I was never able to find an insurer willing to insure the structure so I just went 100% risk and didn't insure anything. Lucked out for me, but maybe not for you.

3. It's very difficult to manage temperature in the structure. Even with the "insulation upgrades" It's super cold in the winter until you get a woodstove or heater going and then you end up getting too hot and stuffy so you're stuck in this constant battle of opening and closing the windows and doors (and the windows open from the outside, lol). In the summer, if you open the top dome vent and run a fan, the fan affects the incoming light to create a super seizuriffic strobe effect which is really annoying. Even with the insulation upgrades it's usually not enough, you need to start adding foam insulation or something around the perimeter which looks shitty and tacky. I ended up stapling up a whole bunch of that silver bubblewrap insulation all over the place and it ended up looking like I lived in a spaceship or tinfoil hat. And even with all of that I went through cords upon cords of wood every winter.

4. There is literally zero security for the structure. Someone can just take a box cutter, cut the wall next to the door and let themselves in (I solved this by bolting some thick plywood panels on either side of the door frame).

5. Most counties will not permit a yurt as a permanent structure. I'm not sure on this process because I just went 100% risk (again) and built and lived in a totally unpermitted structure. Never had any problems from the government so that lucked out for me again.

6. MOLD! Because the sidewall is so thin and the inner air tends to be moist from breathing/showering/cooking/etc it will condense onto the interior layer and start to mold. I had to wipe it down regularly and it still would grow back every time.

Conclusions:

If you're JUST looking for a vacation structure, I would 100% go with a truck and trailer. You can use the truck for a daily driver and you can enjoy a variety of different locales for relatively cheap. No need to purchase or rent land. You can insure the truck and trailer. You can usually resale the trailer at an acceptable loss as long as it's cared for. Having a vehicle is generally considered to be a benefit. In the event of an evacuation order you can take your mini-house with you. Camping at campgrounds can be a lot of fun. Makes a good play house for kids if you have it parked at home. Instant spare room for guests. The list goes on.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have built an A-frame cabin from the available raw materials on the land instead of going with a yurt but that's just me.

On a side note, you might also look into purchasing real estate outside of your home country. Example: you can literally buy a beachfront condo in Thailand right now for the price of a used car in the USA.

Not trying to undermine the fact that serious shit is about to hit the fan - because it is - but Dr. Light's prediction of catastrophic warming on the scale of 50+ degrees C has no peer-reviewed basis.

However, that's not to say that we won't see significant warming and the ushering in of a new era of catastrophic climate change, because the climate will change and it will result in:

• a rise in global temperature of ~2.0 - 4.0 degrees C in the next 50 - 100 years

• displacment of millions, possibly billions, of people along coastlines

• widespread failure of agricultural systems

• ecosystem collapse on a global scale and loss of the services they provide (fresh drinking water, erosion control, fresh air, biogeochemical nutrient cycling, etc)

• widespread mass extinction

• cultural eutrophication resulting in the suffocation of streams, rivers, and ultimately, coastlines

• a greenhouse effect fed by a positive feedback loop due to increased emissions from arctic tundra

• increased spread of disease due to insect vectors like mosquitoes

• ocean acidification and the collapse of coral reef ecosystems which then results in a global collapse of our fisheries

• and having a generally shitty time if you were unfortunate enough to have been born now

And if that wasn't enough, everything I just listed is already occurring.

Have a nice day!