Most vintage cast iron pans were ground flat, they only stopped doing that as a cost saving measure later on.

My vintage flat cast iron pan from the 30’s keeps its seasoning just as well as my modern one, and is a bit more non-stick compared to the modern ones.

What determines if a seasoning will flake off is mostly due to the type of oil used to create the seasoning. Flax seed oil will create a much harder seasoning, but it is the most prone to being chipped or flaking off.

Most other types of fat, like Crisco (don’t cook with it!) or canola oil, will produce a perfectly good and resilient seasoning on smooth or bumpy cast iron.

Used Buicks from the 2000’s can be had for around 3 grand and are very reliable if they have the 3.8l engine. Insurance is often less then 400 a year.

Are the cars used? Early 2000’s Buicks with the 3.8l engine are incredibly cheap even with low miles (a really mint one is 5k, a good daily driver can be had for 2.5 to 3.5k).

They’re extremely reliable and relatively safe cars. Not bad on gas, cheap to repair, and extremely cheap insurance, since you don’t need collision, only liability.

Until other countries begin accepting asylum claims from U.S. Citizens, that simply isn’t an option available to most of us, except for the wealthy or those who already have the desired jobs that would allow them to emigrate.

You have no idea how much I would love to see a general strike tomorrow, or literally any time before 3 fucking years from now, and if we’re lucky that will happen.

But so far the only concrete date we have that’s being pushed by our biggest unions is May 1st, 2028, so that’s the date I’m going to spread. If there is a call to have one sooner by any of the major unions, then I’ll switch to spreading that one instead.

Less than 10% of the US workforce is unionized. Non-unionized workers are terrified to unionize, or to join in a general strike without one due to living hand to mouth, often a month’s wages away from homelessness, and many more with health conditions rely on their job for critical life insurance to afford staying alive.

Unlike the EU, we don’t have strong social safety nets that would encourage a less formal and spontaneous general strike.

That’s not to say I don’t understand how time sensitive this is, and that every week we wait, the regime gets stronger and more able to suppress us, but I’m trying to work with what I’ve got.

If you have any suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them.

I can’t find anything referencing 2030, so I assume you’re joking (or something is whooshing over my head).

For others reading, May 1st 2028 is still on, plan around it and try to get any contracts you negotiate to end on that day (but strike with the rest of us even if not).

Hell fuckin’ yeah! Y’all best slap an email to the IWW and get that ball rolling so you’ll be able to join the general strike planned for May 1st 2028 (May day).

There would be no real incentive to take my potatoes, since you already have your needs being met.

But if you decided you wanted to steal my personal property anyway for giggles, especially under threat of violence, I would likely tell the neighbors or community we both live in what you’re doing, and you may be shunned from the community.

If you attempt to commit violence against me, I could defend myself, and call upon a community defense group to help, similar to how Rojava does it.

I think you’d be surprised how uncommon that sort of behavior would be under what would effectively be a semi-post scarcity society. A person living in anarchist Catalonia during the revolution described how odd it was after they abolished money, and people had the option of simply taking more than they needed. But he described how quickly people adapted to it, and began only taking what they needed, as they became assured they would be able to get more when they needed it, and didn’t want to deprive soneone else.

There’s quite a repository of archeological evidence that the style of society I’m describing was once the norm until fairly recently in human history, showing us that our current mode of existence, where dominance hierarchies and artificial scarcity rule, is not a deeply rooted or unchangeable aspect of human nature, but in fact an aberration from the norm.

You can read more on that aspect in the book The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Highly recommend it.

Humans are astonishingly cooperative with eachother in a post scarcity environment, but there have been few opportunities in the modern era for that to come out and flourish, as otherwise capitalism wouldn’t be able to perpetuate itself.

No one would take your potatoes. Anything you grow or build by yourself is your own personal property that is yours to do with as you wish.

The grand idea of an Anarchist society is that if we collectively worked toward just meeting everyone’s basic needs, it would remove the ability for people to coerce others to work for them under threat of homelessness or starvation otherwise (our current arrangement in society).

This basic work to meet the essential needs of everyone, if mostly automated with the aid of machinery and computers, would realistically mean everyone would collectively only need to pitch in about 3 months of their time per year to maintain a reasonable standard of living, the rest of the year would be free time to do with as they please, to form cooperatives with people on equal footing, to spend time with family, to garden, or to create art.

This collective work could not be enforced with violence, coercion, or a state (as none would exist, ideally), otherwise it would quickly descend into authoritarianism. It would have to be taken up willingly by individual communities, and it is very likely they would do so once the benefits are made clear and they are not under the yolk of capitalism coercing them to worry about themselves above all, and instead begin to think on a collective as well as an individual scale. It would be a stark improvement in quality of life of 95% of the population, something unseen in history except briefly during the Spanish Revolution.

The New Deal ultimately was a band-aid to prevent a violent revolution from taking place, a desperate plea from Roosevelt to the rich to ease off before the top blows (and even then, the rich were pissed off enough by that to try for a coup attempt).

WWII and strong unions caused those changes to stick for a time, but the problem is history has shown us that with capitalism, it’s only ever temporary relief. Eventually the rich simply can’t take it anymore, and they plot against the common man with renewed vigor. They finally got the ball rolling for their benefit in the 70’s, and its been a steady decline since then, as they spread doubt, bust unions, bribe politicians who are all too willing to help for a pitiful amount of money or a free camper. Then when the rock is almost entirely milked, as it is now, and as it was back in the gilded age, instead of letting up, they squeeze harder.

You would prefer another New Deal, another breather for the working class where the rich capitulate and give up a slightly smaller piece of the pie again, and let us live a little better for a few more decades.

Problem is, the world wasn’t on the brink of climate collapse in the 1930’s. A repeat of that solution, for capitalism to be reigned in, but still relying on infinite growth to survive, simply isn’t compatible with a livable biosphere for 10 billion people. If we try another New Deal reset, we’ll simply make the lives of the working class in first world countries a little easier while the equator burns, and the poor die en-masse as they migrate and struggle for water.

Authoritarian communism certainly isn’t the answer, history has proven that time and time again. But if we’re to survive, capitalism must end soon, that much is assured.

Anarchism has shown the most promise in history before being quashed by the authoritarians. The rich and powerful will fight it violently, but if enough people come together and resist through merely withholding our labor, we could implement it mostly peacefully, and once that genie is out of the bottle, I very much doubt most people would prefer to go back to capitalism (I’d highly recommend reading The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin, to get an idea of what that sort of future could look like).

Whether or not markets in some form exist is another matter, and one that would need to be experimented with, but basic essentials to life should be free to anyone. Markets could exist for non-essentials.

It doesn’t have to be violent. We could just collectively decide to ban capitalist corporations in favor of all businesses being worker owned cooperatives. That would get you pretty far towards a more equal and fair society.

I also wasn’t a fan, mainly due to how often you need to resupply to stay alive. You get a very small window of opportunity to do actual exploration before you need to go find more food and water, on top of gathering a bunch of other materials.

I liked parts of it, but ultimately just got frustrated with the tedious parts and bailed.

Thank you for your help! :D

Thank you for contributing!! :D

Just to clarify, this isn’t a normal toothless petition, this is an official EU mechanism that allows citizens to bring problems to the attention of the European Commission, and force them to pass judgement on it legally. You can read more about it here.

It’s good to be skeptical of anything asking for that personal info, but I’d suggest researching into it to confirm that it is indeed legit.

Thank you for signing the UK one :)

Thank you so much for contributing! :D

Absolute legend.

Glad to help out, and thank you for letting me use your well written words! :D

I suspect they would’ve brushed it off regardless, they didn’t want to deal with it. There’s another 100k UK petition (The one linked to at the bottom of the OP text) that would force them to re-look at it with more depth which is also ending quite soon.

Hell yeah! We can do this!