Nobody shovels snow or winterizes the power supply in Galt’s Gulch.
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I have never seen a kitchen that didn’t have one of these. Their cheap, they work, and don’t require much exertion.
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Why not both?
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You’d just take the explanation out of context.
It’s out-of-contexts all the way down.
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Takes like 6 hours to learn to use one though
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That’s because it’s left-handed.
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Spoken like a true deceitful socialist.
But ok, I’ll bite. Look, if I sell (that is, give) you water and electricity, how are you going to deal in just this situation where water and electricity are not available?? Right now, you are mewling babies, incapable of helping yourself.
Don’t you see that you should have been on top of this way before, prepping and storing water, food and ammunition? Why don’t you have your own water well and diesel generator like everyone else?
What’s that? You live on the 20th floor of an apartment building in a large city? Move! (Are these questions really that difficult?)
Wake up!
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One tell is “cb license.” CB Radio, in the US at least, requires no license. No self-respecting ham would call a ham license a “cb license,” not to mention that hams often use their call signs online, even when they’re not running their transmitters. Still, it sounds awfully plausible, and it’s possible that terminology got garbled between the time the “preppers” were cosplaying and now with the real emergency on their hands.
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The funny thing is (and I mean weird funny, not haha funny) people who live in denser urban areas are far less of a drain on the “socialist provided” networks than these rural folks. Who’s paying to maintain that road, those power lines, send the school bus out there? We are. All of us taxpayers are subsidizing their decision to live 20 miles away from the nearest trunk line or main road. I know sometimes they have to pay for initial set up, but the ongoing maintenance and repairs get passed on to us all.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot of people who do, and don’t realize it. I’ve used mine a couple of times just to get the hang of it, but otherwise have one of the Swing-A-Way openers.
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The fact that Mr. Boyd resigned, and Ms. Boyd has been let go from her school job (paid with public monies) after “defending” (FTA) her partner’s screed, is all to the good for the civic-minded, community-oriented Texans with whom I share this big ol’ funny ol’ crazy-ass state.
To all people everywhere, and to my Texas neighbors near and far:
Thank you for standing up to bullies in the past, present, and future.
Your courage means the difference between a livable world and one that is so clearly not.
Words matter.
Actions have consequences.
If one runs for and holds a public office, it is a really good idea to act like one gives a hot damn about people. The People are the Public. If you are being paid with money from taxes–people’s taxes, sales tax, property taxes (that’s how most public schools are funded here in Texas)–have a care, will ya?
I am proud of those who held the Boyds accountable.
Here’s what mutual aid looks like in Texas:
Btw, am also proud of Beto O’Rourke who has joined us in working the problems here:
https://twitter.com/BetoORourke
Same. Ish.
Food? check: dry goods, canned goods, and of course The Exciting Race to Eat Everything In the Fridge and Freezer Before It Spoils!
Water? check: snowmelt, on neighbor’s woodstove (our wellhead froze solid)
Fire grate? check
Firewood? All wet and/or frozen solid!
Shelter?
uh…
I thought we were to “shelter in place”… that was the plan.
So we propped up some old scraps of blueboard sheet styrofoam against the northside windows that were icing up on the inside of our home;
then I found 30-inch sheetroll mylar in my son’s room (from a science project) and DH and I taped the mylar from inside, shiny side facing to exterior on north-facing windows;
indoor temps went into freefall (from start point of 68°F)… it was ~40°F inside before the power came back on;
we slept here at home (I can see my breath in here… huh) and we stayed off the icy roads, tried to manage the many community problems as they unfolded… call it rendering hyperlocal mutual aid;
(btw if you are in Texas and can help, please see this open-source doc:
and thank you for considering)
we went to warm up at the neighbor’s woodstove and I caught a virus, ran a 103-104°F for two days and hallucinated rectangles and “problems as rectangles” (pls anyone reading this, PM me what that means if you know) as I slept my way through the course of the disease.
(Our central Texas community is electricity-only because it is an UWI and it was decided at the outset that propane tanks and natural gas often go boom in many unpleasant ways during nonideal conditions. Until rather recently, fireplaces and woodstoves were prohibited in the restrictive property owner association covenants.)
Plenty so far but none where my home was 40°F for several days.
First time for everything, no?
We had two of those in this neighborhood in the past 3 decades.
Lessons learned: keep the chainsaws handy and tuned up, chains sharp or new, and the tractors, and know where the gas and diesel cans are. When in doubt, add this to gas cans if the gas is fresh and is unlikely to be used in a month or more:
or this
YMMV: pls do some research for better if these fuel stabilizer brands make you queasy; they are what we use here.
Not. As. Such. Yet.
Does that come before or after the rain of blood, the plague of frogs, etc.? We have already had several bad years of locusts…
Yeah, eat through and rotate cans. It ain’t rocket surgery.
And if conditions are such that cooking is impossible, eating out of cans beats peanut butter sandwiches and granola bars 24/7. Most of my neighbors ran out of bread.
A kind of health insurance. I completely agree. And aesthetics be damned.
For those of us on unpredictable income streams, members of the precariat, keeping a month’s food supply on hand is nothing more than common sense and will save you a lot of faster than having the same value in currency stored in an account, only to go to the grocery and find the shelves very very bare, which has been the case this week for many Texans.
Other manmade disaster in Texas barely avoided:
ETA: clarifier, poor sentence structure
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His libertarian fantasy planets are entirely populated by smug jerks carrying guns around who somehow never have to a clean a toilet or do laundry, yet society magically functions. One presumes invisible women locked in servitude, which would be on brand for him.
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So basically Ayn Rand but acknowledges his work is unbelievable fantasy.
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Anyone know wtf this is about?
https://granthshala.com/his-lights-remained-on-during-the-texas-storm-now-he-owner-16752/
I think it is recopied from a NYT article that I couldn’t read because paywall.
"“My savings are exhausted,” said Scott Willoughby, a 63-year-old Army Veteran who lives on Social Security payments in a Dallas suburb. He He said he had nearly emptied his savings account, so that he could pay the electricity bill of $ 16,752 taken from his credit card – 70 times what he usually pays for all his utilities jointly. “There is nothing I can do about it, but it has broken me.”
Mr. Willoughby is among the scores of Texans who have reported electricity bills to skyrocket, as is the price of keeping the lights on top and putting in a refrigerator shot. For customers whose electricity prices are not fixed and are instead tied to fluctuating wholesale prices, the spikes have been astronomical."
"DeAndré Upshaw said his power was on and off at his Dallas apartment during the storm. Many of their neighbors were in bad shape, so they considered electricity and heat to be fortunate, inviting some neighbors with warmth.
Then Mr. Upshaw, 33, noticed that his utility bill had increased to more than $ 6,700 from Grady. He Typically this time of year pays about $ 80.
He As long as the storm continued, he was trying to preserve power, but it did not work. He Another utility company has also signed up to switch, but is still being charged until the change goes into effect on Monday.
“It’s a utility – it’s something you need to live,” Mr. Upshaw, 33, said. “I don’t think I’ve used $ 6,700 in electricity in the last decade. It is not a cost that any reasonable person will have to pay intermittent electricity service for five days at bare minimum. “"
I mean… is this true?
Edit: actually here’s a better article:
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It looks like they had a plan that wasn’t “locked in” to a fixed price, but followed the spot price. Good when the prices are low and tending down, but without a safety limit when prices go crazy.
Allowing utilities to sell plans like that is insane, but regulations bad and socialist!
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Gonna be a hard sell, with senior citizens having their bank accounts automatically emptied. They are the one thing Repugnicans have to tiptoe around with their anti-socialism talk, since, socialism is keeping most of them alive.
To me, it’s a double standard on the whole price gouging thing in a disaster situation. “Pricing by demand” isn’t that much different than saying N95 masks are worth $25 bucks each because of demand scarcity. The stated purpose of these plans is to incentivize conserving energy during normal times, but it becomes a lucrative deal when the heavy use is necessary for survival.
If they can clamp down the stock market when the poors start making money, they can lock prices when a disaster is declared, too. Hypocrites.
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Texas deregulation has lead to lots of different energy companies and plans. I have an energy plan that specifies 100% renewable source (almost entirely wind, some solar) that was a fixed rate when I signed up, but when the contract term ended it automatically switched to a month-to-month variable rate. I’m not scared they’ll screw me like some of the horror stories that have been posted (don’t yet know what the charge was for last week).
This is the beauty of deregulation. Everyone will buy electricity, and if it’s legal the easiest way to make a buck is always theft. Sell exploitative products and then when you know people lack the resources to fight in court (either because they were already broke or because disaster struck) you take whatever they have left knowing there won’t be shit they can do about it. But don’t worry the money will trickle back down eventually
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This is one of the reasons I never, ever sign up for the automatic payment plan. I am so scared of something like this happening, and me not noticing until it’s too late.
It has resulted in at least one late charge when I was not keeping up on things, but the general peace of mind is so, so worth it.
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IANAL
and
the devil’s in the details or the end-user-agreement etc.
…but…
https://www2.texasattorneygeneral.gov/alerts/alerts_view_alpha.php?id=200&type=1
There are [at least] two “justice” “systems” in the U.S.
One is for the rich.
One for everybody else.
Dunno if Public Citizen or similar is going to organize a lawsuit against the profiteers or not.
My mom was on supplemental oxygen for days, the machine plugged into the wall and ran on grid power. Any person who argues that electricity is not a necessity or an essential item has never had to care for someone who requires supplemental oxygen and friggin [electric] heat to stay alive.
ETA:
Oh hey lookit…
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