Something for your consideration. All this AI and all these data centers that no one is asking for... Why are they needed? They are future mass surveillance. Our governments are building the infrastructure they need to find "hot spots" in the population. They wish to prevent a the fire of indignation from spreading and to do that they must stamp out the first embers. At this time, people, particularly Gen Z, are starting to realize a group of people that have caused the economic conditions we have now. So the government's solution is not to rectify the economic solution. Heavens no! They paint with broad brush and pass hate speech laws and wring their hands worrying about antisemetic hate speech. Doesn't take much to extrapolate to the future to see they will need to focus on "problematic individuals" in the near term. This is the driving for for these data centers.

History doesn't exactly repeat but it does rhyme. We should look at the russian revolution to see how dissidents were dealt with. Arrested one by one in a way that caused fear in the neighbors rather than a desire to act and stop the arrests. It might be an interesting study to see what is in store for us. Americans do have something that the Russians on 1917 didn't have... guns. Lots of guns. 1.4 guns per citizen.

At this point, America the free is just a slogan. You need to prepare your families to not have to bend knee to the government in order to get a meal.

Keep your powder dry, coordinate with your neighbors. Draw lines in the sand and have an action plan in your community when the "gestapo" comes for your neighbors. You will be next.

Today I finalized our front gate. It has a shelly PM1 module on it to act as a momentary push button to open the gate and also I mounted a magnetic reed switch on the gate that interacts with the other leaf of the gate to indicate when the gate opens. I'm getting a SMS message on my phone when the gate opens now. What's cool about the shelly PM1 module is that it's generally around $16 and is a wifi/bluetooth switch, switch input and power meter... and it runs on 24vdc to 240vac. I think the gen 4 version is rated for 24-48v.

I also mounted a $35 chinese dual lens camera at the gate. The camera works with home assistant and we just happend to get a delivery today after it was installed and it panned and followed the guy walking from his vehicle to the package box and back perfectly... $35...

https://a.co/d/01sEXyXc

Safety.... We put a shade cloth on the greenhouse and it required me to be in the man basket on the tractor. My wife was driving and running the loader with me in the basket. In the middle of moving me to another place, a friend who came over to help walked into the tip of the pallet fork and hit his head... AND at the same time, my elderly mother decided she saw a plastic bag wrapped around the blade of the finish mower on hte back of the tractor. She got UNDER the mowing deck to get it out. So all at the same time, my wife is lifting me w/o tipping the forks too far from level, a guy walks into the moving pallet forks and wife looks at him.... and started to roll backwards to move me to a new location. HOW MANY UNECESSARY BAD THINGS CAN HAPPEN AT THE SAME TIME.

folks THINK when you are around loud moving equipment.

On a lighter note... Wife had me up in the man basket earlier that day getting ready to do the shade cloth. When we got done with that portion of the job, I told her that I didn't want anyone else running the loader if I was in it. I have come to know her manner of moving and levelling the basket and we're synchronized.... I said it ain't perfect but when you "hucka" I know how much to "bucka".... and she gave me a Talledega fist bump saying "huckkkkakkaaaa" and I bumped her back saying "buckkkkkkkkaaaaaa" lol. Love that woman.

And if you don't have one of these for your pallet forks get one... they are great.

Visited a neighbor today because I haven't seen him in a while. He's built an 1800sq ft house with 2x6 walls and open cell spray foam. He went to great lengths to double the roof decking and put perlins in for an air gap between the roof sheathing and metal roof. Despite this, he said his 24k btu mini split is struggling to keep the house under 82F. He made two mistakes.... 1) he tried to use one compressor unit to drive many heads in bedrooms etc.... and ended up with a 67ft pipe run. So he's loosing the cooling before it gets to the head unit. 2) he rounded down when estimating a size unit so it would run longer and keep humidity down. Minisplits are infinitely variable speed, so don't be afraid to round up to the next size unit.

This makes two guys I know who recently built new mid-small size houses that are having problems with minisplits. They both share the same issue... they went too small.

Here's another thing one of them didn't see coming... the 9 and 12k units use different size tubing that the 24 and up sized units. So one of them needs to upgrade and can't without tearing out sheet rock in the wall to replace the tubing.

So.... if running a conventional one speed compressor HVAC unit, don't go too big because the unit won't run long enough to dehumidify. But with a minisplit, round up on the tons / BTUs.