misteraven

Yeah man, thats been my plan, just not there yet. Was going to setup a grow house to get a jump on seedlings in deep winter, especially for shit like tomatoes which grow super slow up here. Then looking to setup a big insulated hoop house with an aquaponic setup so I can do year round hydro culture gardening and also function stack some farm raised cat fish as well. Freezes up here are expected LOL! Basically happens most nights other than a couple months in deep summer. My last frost date is June 22 if I remember correctly.

This topic has taken an interesting turn... @Crackwhateverreally appreciate you popping up and dropping such awesome info. (Wish I could double prop you). And @Merceryou already know that I've been super pumped with the gems you've been dropping. Anyhow... Your latest comments bring this link to mind: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html I took this test myself and not only did it get my State correct and my city correct, but actually managed to pin point the general area where I'm from to within about 30 miles. It accomplished this with a simple test that asked zero questions that would raise a red flag for me. And I'm fairly paranoid, so that's saying something. This is literally a dumb little quiz that is part of an every day content piece that I have no doubt barely scratches the surface of what is possible. They did this with a couple dozen question that felt totally random and in no way hinted at where I'm from in the literal sense or that anyone among us would see as intrusive or self incriminating. It literally uses an algorithm that finds nuance is language pattern and systematically narrows it down accordingly until it either finds you or waits on additional input. Scary stuff when you see how this dumb quiz was amazingly accurate with such little input. I have zero doubt that this single post you're reading from me has more inputs than their stupid quiz required. (Let alone using a bot to scrape all my posts to process into a profile). Likewise, though I've never allowed any of that face mapping app shit myself, they can get pretty far from a photo and I also have no doubt that soon enough they'll use that tech for drivers licenses and passports, etc and soon after have them in public places for our *security*. And @MercerI feel where you're coming from in regards to not being able to not give a fuck. But do realize that you're often playing into the game. Smartest thing you can do is put your energies and investments into what you can actually control. Set yourself up, insure you can survive long term without relying on any one or any thing else.

Wow @Keepitrailgreat seeing you again man! Welcome back, hope to see you around... Yeah, post more photos! Message me when you're in Montana. You're welcome to come crash.

Question @DETO- You said that What do you mean by that? Do you actually discuss or is more that you get to see the occasional glimpse of what they're up to via social media and occasionally drop a comment? Not trying to trivialize your relationship or disrespect in any way, but the experience I seem to have and have read over and over again is that people think they're connected but in reality nobody is actually connecting. Saw and discussed this with @diggitywhere we literally been following each other from pretty near day 1. We've been friends in real life even longer and yet somehow barely spoke to each other via social media. Literally years going by with hardly even a comment. If anything, it made me more disconnected since seeing his post made me somehow feel like I was connected and didn't really have to make any more effort to keep up with him or what he was doing.

Thanks for suggesting that... Was trying to remember it earlier. If you know something about it, be great if you could chime in since my guess sis your more tech oriented / qualified than the average person on here. For now, saw this write up that might help explain it to the security conscious and interested amongst you: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/getting-started-with-tails-the-encrypted-leave-no-trace-operating-system/ TailsOS: https://tails.boum.org/

Yeah, medical care is awesome. Maybe we should allow the government more control over it so it gets even better cause we all know how efficient they are at managing social services. And meanwhile... Sorry, had to slide that in. Sucks man...

reading the forum, refining a few ideas I've been considering and plotting some next steps.

Posted that in the who's missing thread, but equally relevant in this one.

Not sure if this comment belongs here or in the social media weigh in thread... Been thinking a lot about this and talking to some people... There's been a handful of comments, none bad, about how slow the forum is. As I've mentioned in other places, being honest... I'm amazed this place never died completely during the "dark era" where I basically ignored the forum entirely for a year or more at a time. Really its testament to the few moderators that stuck around, as well as a handful of die hard members that also chose to stick it out. This being said, after really analyzing the situation, Instagram really isn't much better from my experience. On my personal account I have a little under 2000 followers. On the @12ozprophet account, there's almost 55,000. Back in the early days of IG, I used to regularly see posts garner 2000+ likes, sometimes more and there weren't nearly as many people following. Now it's exceedingly rare to see it hit 1000 likes and I've seen many hardly hit 100. 100 likes out of 55,000 followers! I follow a quite a few people on there, something like 400 or so and yeah, there's a fairly steady stream of content, but most my feed are the same dozen or so high profile commercial accounts that each post a dozen or two dozen times a day and no doubt pay a ton to both prioritize posts and fully optimize their strategy. Most the time, their posts are pseudo ads tying back to posts that in turn are likely paid for or at the least, product from companies that they work with regularly. I know I'm already on a negative tip regarding my opinions on social media, but what I'm getting at is, yeah... sometimes the forum feels like its moving a little slow, especially compared to what we all remember. But likewise, Instagram doesn't feel like it has all that much activity to me either. At best, you get see a flurry of likes right after a post, but as we all know, comments are pretty rare and actual discussion is all but nonexistent. Because its so easy to like and drop an emoji or use it in general, combined with their algorithm that *curates* your feed for you and obviously shuffles posts every time you load to make it feel like there's all this new exciting stuff (never mind that its not unusual to see a post for the first time that's 3 days old), you get the perception that there's all types of activity happening on Instagram. Anyhow, reality is that we're something like 5000% up from where traffic was at only a couple months ago when I started posting regularly on the last forum. Last week, we managed to break back to back traffic records nearly every day. Since launching the new forum, stats have been zero'd out and are accurate. On the old board, it wasn't unusual for me to find myself as the only logged in user. I'd get excited to see when there was 3 or more of us logged in at a time (with mods often being at least 1 if not both of the other 2 members). Now I'm seeing 10 or more on average and seeing it spike as high as 25 logged in members at peak times. For the last 18 months, the record for all users at one time stood at 147 people. Last week, we set a new record at 389 people! I've helped recover at least a few hundred old accounts in the last few weeks and have seen a surge in new registrations. For whatever reason, many still aren't posting often despite how easy it is to do so on the new forum (especially on mobile), but new posts / threads have certainly grown exponentially each week since relaunching the forum and actively promoting the forum. The more popular sections like here in Channel Zero have the entire front page with posts that are under 24 hours old. The original Writers Forum literally took many years to get to the level we all remember. We've managed to bring things back to life in about two months. Again, being amazed at the fact there was anything left to bring back to life after all that neglect, technical issues, drama, etc... I'm equally amazed at how far we've come in the last two months. With the rate of growth we're seeing, I can only imagine where this will all be a year from now. Obviously we have a ways to go before posts on here seem to be near real time as they were back at its peak. When I started mapping out a come back plan and working on this new forum, my theories about social media fatigue and frustration and the need for real, meaningful online discussions and true community were simply speculation. I can say with confidence that we now have solid, tangible evidence that this is all real and more importantly, that we can turn things around with the forum and rebuild a significant community and reclaim ownership of our small corner of the internet, as well as the relationships, discussions and interactions we all share. Just thought I'd put this out there as its been on my mind a lot lately. I'm doing all I can to fix issues as they pop up, visualize new features and improvements, as well as reach out to as many old members as I can while also promoting to all the young kids that are more recently turned on to 12ozProphet. As you know I'm also starting to find a little rhythm and momentum with 12ozProphet as a brand, putting out the type of stuff I'd be excited to see myself and working to once again set the bar for cool stuff. I'm constantly reminding myself to stay patient, to look at the evidence and successes around me and to not get overwhelmed, frustrated or discouraged that I'm largely starting over again from the beginning and often pitted against either commercial titans like Facebook / Instagram or bullshit brands (and even some I was a fan of) that can barely be credited with going through the motions with their recycled and diluted concepts and bullshit product. Sorry for the monologue, but this is as much about me reminding myself of all this as it is me reminding you guys. We have something special with what we've collectively created with this forum. It's 100% on all of us to build it back up and beyond the successes of the past. I welcome any input, feedback or suggestions on what else we can be doing and also encourage you guys to leverage your own social media accounts and relevant relationships to spread the word to old members and new potential members. It's absolutely going to happen one way or another, but no doubt we can help push it along a little faster. Appreciate all the support you guys have provided over the many years. Cheers!

I'm sure somebody must still be in touch?

This morning...

@Schnitzelnice man, post some shots of the garden when you can get to it. Id really love to expand what I have going, but need more time and more funds. Sucks because it’s relatively easy to mostly automate and expand things... Get some drip irrigation going, more raised beds, etc. Also wish I could magically accelerate the maturity of my fruit orchard. Put in just over a dozen trees last year ranging from cherry to apricot, peach and nectarines, as well as several types of apple. Still plan to put in a few more including plum and pear, but it’ll be a solid half decade or longer before any produce fruit. Berries are going great though, so going to expand the shut out of that in the meantime.

Ah man, that’s gotta suck.

Damn, too bad you can’t earn frequent flyer points. Assume you at least have pretty good insurance though.

Have to spread the word man. I can say I’ve been recovering a shit ton of accounts the last couple weeks and DMing people like crazy off Instagram, but can definitely use some help from the community on here to reach out to people and help spread the word.

Doing my very best to.

Thank you for the support man. Really apreciate it. Thanks to everyone throwing down hard earned money on oontz product and helping keep this place thriving. Love all ya’ll. ?

Oontzing as I feed scraps to my chickens.

wishing I was more motivated. freakin tired man...

Raspberries are coming in nicely. Literally havent watered them once cause they’re too far from the faucet.

At least it’s a good investment. Price of bullets went up more than gold or silver in the last decade. And most my guns are worth more now than when I bought them. No doubt they’ll be worth a shit ton more if someone like HRC gets into office next.

7.1 million followers, really?! Reminder to read this: https://forum.12ozprophet.com/topic/86519-weigh-in-has-the-social-media-revolution-devolved-conversation/