asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: radiant or forced air << yard shed. portable furnace thing.
asciilifeform goes off to check on roaring propane heater; if water bottle thawed, workshop is habitable
asciilifeform: to the point that the limiting factor is finding climate-controlled floor space for them
asciilifeform does not often have praise for usa, but cannot deny that it is a first-class graveyard for surplus golden toilet tech - e.g., machines like the 'tecan 200' (see ancient thread) originally costing 1/3 $mil can be had for ~5-10k usd, etc.
asciilifeform: but wanted to point to the difference between a ubiquitous piece of construction equipment (SOP for electric welders at large sites) and something like a 6-axis cnc mill
asciilifeform: perhaps in some ultra-fascist locale like Mass.?
asciilifeform: lol! everybody on the street (but me, apparently) owns a genset
asciilifeform: ebay hunting for usg surplus tech is a national sport.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: except they CANT be had in the us << tell that to kanzure, or any of the ten thousand folks like asciilifeform but moar-loaded.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the value of ME running pogos is minimal. there are N+k**p things i can d << lol, we know these were for friends, not mircea_popescu's house
asciilifeform: scientific instruments - different ballgame.
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: all transistors are phototransistors.
asciilifeform: for sufficient price, can get an elephant shipped into pyongyang or south pole.
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: it most certainly cannot be true that he cannot get a pogo shipped in. but quite likely true that he cannot get a pogo shipped in for 18 usd per.
asciilifeform: -everything- is a problem of the poorly networked.
asciilifeform: it all exists, yes. and the folks who live there are almost qualified to graduate out of usa.
asciilifeform not so foolish as to think about 'homogeneous enforcement environments', knows that there are, e.g., vast deserts in usa where folks set off trucks full of dynamite for amusement, etc.
asciilifeform: i mean, to keep the space for pleasure
asciilifeform: so, not so cheap that one could budget it as lunch money ?
asciilifeform: sounds very spiffy, but i notice ben_vulpes is referring to this business arrangement in the past tense
asciilifeform: e.g., were you free to live in and legally receive mail there, if you wished ?
asciilifeform: and a total lack of draconian conditions in lease ?
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: your warehouse had heat? 3-phase current? private apartment out of sight of other tenants ?
asciilifeform: but the workshop fella posted that to 'youtube' and was not afraid of being robbed. (however, long after, he since moved, to a larger space, iirc.)
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: one could get a similar space in some parts of usa, but it would be under 24/7 orc siege and security costs for parity with the pictured workshop would dwarf the rent
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: the non-obvious tidbit in the film is that the man can afford those digs without being especially loaded
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes, mircea_popescu: failure of imagination ^ here. more interestingly, we could, say, go on a 'disappearing' plane. or, more comically, turned out on the return leg: 'we've never heard of you, go and starve in mexico city where you came from'
asciilifeform: what political tack would you imagine he'd have taken, if he had not been a lamer (as pictured in your article) ?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the ruling elite of his time/place showed every symptom of having 'lost the mandate of heaven', to use the chinese term of art tailor made for this
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: perhaps the historical picture in my head is incomplete, but i just can't grasp the portrait of orwell as cockless worm.
asciilifeform: ialism. As it is, the aeroplane is primarily a thing for dropping bombs and the radio primarily a thing for whipping up nationalism. Even before the war there was enormously less contact between the peoples of the earth than there had been thirty years earlier, and education was perverted, history rewritten and freedom of thought suppressed to an extent undreamed of in earlier ages. And there is no sign whatever of these te
asciilifeform: 'Some months ago, in this column, I pointed out that modern scientific inventions have tended to prevent rather than increase international communication. This brought me several angry letters from readers, but none of them were able to show that what I had said was false. They merely retorted that if we had Socialism, the aeroplane, the radio, etc. would not be perverted to wrong uses. Very true, but then we haven’t Soc
