off-the-grid

323 results

pages: 433 words: 127,171

The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
by Gretchen Bakke
Published 25 Jul 2016

Through the California energy crises of 2000–2001, through the 2003 East Coast blackout, through the rise of variable generation and the forced privatization of generation in many markets, they believed that something like business as usual might persevere through the rough times. People in America would always need electricity, and who better than they to continue managing its provision? What they didn’t see coming was grid defection. For so long, “off the grid” had been a suspect term. Going off the grid was something that longhairs ingigliated in clouds of pot smoke and right-wing alligator farmers did (both groups form a notable presence in the new Colorado). It was not something that would ever occur to regular folks, city folks, and reputable mainstream companies. Not since alternating current did away with private plants in the 1890s, and not since the consolidation of power in the 1910s brought whole regions under the purview of a single service provider, had it been fiscally sound to be electricity independent.

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When speaking of the far left coast it may be easy for the dubious reader to attribute a backwoods spirit of do-it-yourself libertarianism to this switch from believing in and relying upon the grid (such as it is). This is not, however, what happened along the Gale-flattened Pacific Coast in the wake of the 2007 storm. Not that there aren’t a fair number of “those people”—the off-the-grid types who live in compounds rather than houses and hold radical political opinions considered far right or far left. But most of the folks we might traditionally refer to as “off-the-grid” have been industriously producing their own power, light, and heat since the late 1960s, mostly by the insecure (if we listen to Straw’s and the DoD’s sound opinion on the matter) means of diesel generators, though one does find the occasional waterwheel converting the unending rain into a tidy stream of volts.

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Not only is it the most humid town in the nation (which is a nice way of saying that it rains all the time), but it was once, long ago, also voted the least good place in the United States to install solar panels. What this all means is that off-the-grid, then as now, is not the same thing as being ideologically “green.” Most people who produce their own power aren’t doing it because they feel deeply that the electricity they get from the national grid is environmentally pernicious, though some do. Rather, absenting themselves from government services—and thus also, ostensibly, from the government’s meddling—means producing power for themselves. Diesel gets you off the grid and so, too, does natural gas (an infrastructural network of another kind). To a certain extent, wood-burning stoves also accomplish this.

Lonely Planet Pocket San Francisco
by Lonely Planet and Alison Bing
Published 31 Aug 2012

(http://laboulangebakery.com; 1909 Union St; 7am-6pm; ; Fillmore St) 10 Mamacita Mexican $$ Offline map Google map Made-completely-from-scratch tortillas, tamales, and two-dozen fresh-daily sauces are among the secrets to this crowd-pleasing yet adventurous Mexican menu, which features dishes ranging from spit-roasted goat to duck carnitas . The knock-out cocktail menu lists 60 tequilas, which explains the room’s constant roar. Make reservations. ( 415-346-8494; www.mamacitasf.com; 2317 Chestnut St; dishes $10-18; dinner; 28, 30, 43) Local Life Off the Grid Food trucks circle like pioneer wagons every Friday night at Off the Grid Offline map ( http://offthegridsf.com; Fort Mason parking lot; dishes under $10; 5-10pm Fri; Marina Blvd) , SF’s largest mobile-gourmet hootenanny of up to 30 trucks (other nights/locations attract less than a dozen trucks; check the website). Arrive before 6:30pm or expect 20-minute waits for Chairman Bao’s clamshell buns stuffed with duck and mango, Roli Roti’s free-range herbed roast chicken, and dessert from The Créme Brûlée Man.

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Today’s spiffy Mex-Deco Marina was mostly built in the 1930s, using debris from the 1906 quake. Top Sight Golden Gate Bridge ( Click here ) Best of San Francisco Outdoors Crissy Field ( Click here ) Baker Beach ( Click here ) Architecture Golden Gate Bridge ( Click here ) Shopping Mingle ( Click here ) Past Perfect ( Click here ) Bargain Gourmet Off the Grid ( Click here ) Entertainment Fort Mason ( Click here ) For Kids Exploratorium ( Click here ) Getting There Bus 47 and 49 connect Marina to downtown; 41, 30 and 45 run to North Beach; 43 connects to the Haight; 22 runs to the Mission. Car There’s parking at Fort Mason and Crissy Field, and free parking in the adjoining Presidio.

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(www.lovethepalace.org; 3301 Lyon St; Lyon St) Local Life Fort Mason San Francisco takes subversive glee in turning military installations into venues for nature, fine dining and experimental art – including Fort Mason Offline map ( www.fortmason.org; cnr Bay & Franklin Sts; Marina Blvd) , a former shipyard that was the embarkation point for WWII Pacific troops. The military mess halls have been replaced by vegan-friendly Greens ( Click here ) and Off the Grid food trucks ( Click here ), and dockside Herbst Pavilion includes art fairs and wine-tasting in its arsenal (check the website for events). Warehouses now host cutting-edge theater at Magic Theatre and BATS ( Click here ) and the Long Now Foundation (http://longnow.org; bldg A, Fort Mason; 10:30am-5pm Mon-Fri, 11am-6pm Sat-Sun; Marina Blvd ), a non-profit sponsoring four-dimensional (time-based) art and technology projects.

Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community
by Diana Leafe Christian
Published 14 Jun 2007

Earthaven doesn’t grow much of its own food yet, but Ecovillage at Ithaca (which also encourages bicycling, carpooling, and public transportation), has two CSA farms onsite. Yet so far only a few homes at EcoVillage at Ithaca have composting toilets or are off the grid. And while residents of Los Angeles EcoVillage recycle their trash, compost their kitchen scraps, and grow some fruits and vegetables in their apartment courtyard, they’re almost entirely dependent on grid electricity (so far only three apartments are off the grid), and they buy most of their food at local stores. But Los Angeles EcoVillagers are enthusiastic bicycle and public transportation activists — and get twenty dollars off on their rent if they don’t own a car!

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The Trends Research Institute, a network of interdisciplinary experts who forecast developing trends, echoes Darley’s prediction for “re-localization.” One of the hottest trends they see is a “rapidly growing desire of more people to be selfempowered, non-reliant, and off the grid,” in the broadest possible sense, as in “off the grid”of mainstream society. Such as, for example, ecovillages, sustainable intentional communities, and organized neighborhoods. “It’s time to return to the community,” says Pat Murphy, executive director of The Community Solution,“to clean up the mess and get back on the right path.”

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Who This Book is For This book is Šrst for “cultural creatives” — people who value environmentally sustainable living, cooperation, and a sense of community (and who perhaps have a spiritual practice) — but may not know much about ecovillages or intentional communities and would enjoy learning more. It’s for people who want to know more about folks who live off the grid, grow their own food, or create their own biodiesel fuel, for example, or who share meals with friends and neighbors, raise their children cooperatively with others, work at jobs they Šnd fulŠlling, create their own home-grown entertainment — and thrive. People exactly like this visit ecovillages and intentional communities every week.

The Simple Living Guide
by Janet Luhrs
Published 1 Apr 2014

He was able to get the building code changed in his county. You need to check your local codes. You also may be able to use salvaged wood in the structure of your house if it has been regraded. Living Off the Grid I was so touched by a story sent to me by a Simple Living subscriber, Kirk Nevin, that I decided to look further into this concept of living off the grid. Kirk’s story is reprinted on pages 136–137. Living off the grid means that you supply your own power and water and do not depend on public utilities to keep your house functioning. There are both financial and ecological reasons for choosing this kind of lifestyle.

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The ecological reason is that harvesting energy from the sun, water, and wind uses less energy and creates less pollution than does energy provided by a public utility. While off-the-grid equipment is more expensive than traditional equipment initially, you will save over time because your energy costs will be lower; once you are up and running self-sufficiently, you’ll have no monthly water, light, and electric bills to pay. Off-the-grid living is the most immediately cost efficient if you want to live in a remote area where it would cost more to run a power line to your property than to put together a power system of your own.

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Such a system can be highly cost effective, produces no pollution, and wastes no natural resources. (Some people with complete solar systems even have solar ovens.) Sometimes fuel is required to power a generator. Some appliances, such as a refrigerator, demand a lot of energy and are usually powered by a generator or are manufactured to use with propane. Off the Grid in Nevada Bert and Patti Reslock live off the grid in northern Nevada on a 12-acre parcel. Their two-story home is earth-bermed on the north and sits in a bowl with a beautiful valley for their front yard. This creative use of the natural landscape allowed optimum performance from the secluded home’s solar array, while giving up neither power nor creature comfort.

pages: 412 words: 113,782

Business Lessons From a Radical Industrialist
by Ray C. Anderson
Published 28 Mar 2011

A year and a day after we bought the land (an interval dictated by the tax code), we signed an agreement with the Chattowah Open Land Trust to put seventy-nine of those acres into a “forever wild” conservation easement. Meanwhile, we had set about planning our off-the-grid log cabin in the mountains, and a division of labor had taken effect. Pat handled the aesthetics while I took on the construction and engineering. We both worked with our architect on the size and location of the rooms. High on my list of must-haves was for our cabin to be truly off the grid, meaning no connection to any of the public utilities we take for granted in the city: no utility power, no water or sewerage pipes, no natural gas.

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Round and Round They Go 9. Getting Out of the Breakdown Lane 10. The Circle of Influence, or Love on the Factory Floor 11. The Final Ascent 12. On Leadership, Programs, and Policies 13. Science and Skeptics 14. Awakening the Mind and Spirit 15. The Next Ascent 16. Every Reason for Hope Epilogue: Off the Grid in Lost Valley, North Carolina Appendix A: LCA Comparison of Two Carpet Tile Backing Types Appendix B: Master Evergreen Lease and Services Agreement Appendix C: The Interface Model Index Also by Ray C. Anderson Copyright Acknowledgments Patricia Adams Anderson (Pat), my wife of twenty-five years, leads this list for so patiently supporting me in my personal mission to tell the Interface story far and wide.

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First, we can actually generate green power on-site, as we do at our Bentley Prince Street facility in Southern California, at our factory in LaGrange, Georgia, and at our Dutch facility at Scherpenzeel. Or we can purchase green power from local utilities when they offer it. Every one of our European plants runs off 100 percent green power, straight off the grid. Third, we can invest in off-site renewables to green our energy mix. We’re not hooked up directly to windpower generating stations in North Dakota or New Zealand, but we can buy renewable energy credits (REC) from utilities that are. Whether we generate it ourselves or pay someone else to, the earth wins.

pages: 347 words: 97,721

Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines
by Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby
Published 23 May 2016

“Systems Intelligence Self Evaluation,” Systems Analysis Laboratory, Aalto University, Finland, http://salserver.org.aalto.fi/sitest/2012/. Chapter 5: Stepping Aside 1. Walter Kirn, “The Tao of Robert Downey, Jr.,” Rolling Stone, May 13, 2010. 2. Tricia Drevets, “How to Make Money Living off the Grid,” Off the Grid News, June 25, 2014, http://www.offthegridnews.com/financial/how-to-make-money-living-off-the-grid/. 3. Heather Plett, “What It Means to ‘Hold Space’ for People, plus Eight Tips on How to Do It Well,” Heather Plett blog, March 11, 2015, http://heatherplett.com/2015/03/hold-space/. 4. Steve Wozniak, “Does Steve Jobs Know How to Code?

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It’s hard to imagine a computer taking over any part of what Gervais does to earn his pay. This is what stepping aside is: pegging your earning power to forms of value machines can’t deliver, and probably never will. Note that this poses a very different question than what work can I do without a computer? That question was answered recently by Off the Grid News (which we felt a little sheepish reading online). Without claiming to be exhaustive, it listed eleven ways to make money without tapping into shared utility infrastructures like the Web2: • carpentry • painting • remodeling • artwork (especially high-quality artisanal work) • beekeeping • herbs and traditional medicines • housecleaning • home delivery service or driving service • pet sitting • babysitting • animal care There are a lot of interesting jobs there, but to surface even more (and more high-paying) possibilities, we’re suggesting that the question be asked differently.

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But it is also true that empathy is valuable in any kind of work setting where one’s clients, coworkers, and other stakeholders are humans. Now try to think of another kind. Humor and empathy are just two “right brain” human capacities we would be awfully surprised to see computers excel at. As a fuller list, in the nonexhaustive spirit of Off the Grid’s, many stepping-aside jobs will also center on knowledge work that requires creativity, courage, and conviction. Ethics, emotions, and integrity. Taste, vision, and the ability to inspire. If anything proves that taste belongs on that list, it’s the empire of domestic goddess Martha Stewart. Does she use a computer?

Discover Hawaii the Big Island
by Lonely Planet

I’d also suggest the Waimea Cherry Blossom Heritage Festival (Click here) and the King Kamehameha Day parade (Click here) in North Kohala. Sleeping AKIKO’S BUDDHIST B&B Hostel $ ( 963-6422; www.alternative-hawaii.com/akiko; s/d $65/75, cottages $65-85) Appreciate the wonder of rustic simplicity at this peaceful, no-frills retreat. Rooms are simple – futons on the floor in the main house or twin beds in an adjacent house. Two off-the-grid cottages are teeny but wonderfully ensconced in tropical flora. For longer stays, ask about the artist’s studio. Rates are for shared bathroom and include breakfast. The best part of this B&B might be Akiko herself, a kamaʻaina (born and raised in Hawaii) who farms the 2-acre grounds, invites guests to join morning meditation, coordinates a popular end-of-year mochi pounding festival and hosts worthy cultural events.

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A fantastically verdant setting, complete with 120ft waterfall and swimming hole. Eight rooms (in two buildings) are exquisitely appointed with Asian antiques. The pagoda guesthouse is a worthy splurge and includes a kitchen, laundry facilities and 1.5 bathrooms. All power is hydroelectric and off the grid. The unlit 4-mile road can be tricky at night. See website for driving instructions. HOLMES’ SWEET HOME B&B $ ( 961-9089; www.holmesbandb.com; 107 Koula St; r incl breakfast $80-95; ) In a pleasant residential neighborhood about 2.5 miles from downtown, heading up Kaumana Dr and onto Ainako Ave, this friendly, lived-in B&B provides comfy rooms (both wheelchair accessible) with private entrances, plus a large common area with full-sized fridge and microwave.

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PUNA PUNA ITINERARIES PUNA HIGHLIGHTS DISCOVER PUNA Keaʻau & Around Pahoa Highway 132 Red Road (Highway 137) Highway 130 Top of chapter Puna Ask a Big Islander and they’ll tell you Puna is its own world, not far away but far out. The driving force is change. Here, the original plantation community has been replaced by a new, eclectic population: mainland retirees, nouveau hippies, off-the-grid minimalists, funky artists, New Age seekers, Hawaiian sovereignty activists, organic farmers and the odd pakalolo (marijuana) grower. While different (and sometimes dissonant) from one another, these Punatics relish the laid-back, wristwatch-free lifestyle. They share a deep affinity for the volatile land, which Kilauea Volcano has repeatedly slathered with lava and blessed with black-sand beaches, lava rock tide pools and soothing hot ponds.

pages: 247 words: 71,698

Avogadro Corp
by William Hertling
Published 9 Apr 2014

He let himself out, leaving Maggie full of questions. * * * From the time Mike arrived at the airport in Madison for the flight home, and periodically since he arrived back in Portland, he had tried to reach David by phone. Frustratingly, David had been off the grid in New Mexico. Mike knew that David always went to Christine’s family ranch for the holidays, and he knew that the ranch was off the grid, so he couldn’t claim any legitimate reason for feeling even more suspicious. Yet here he was, feeling manipulated by a software algorithm. David had sent Mike a copy of his itinerary by email weeks earlier, so he had David’s flight information.

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Though he didn’t talk about it, the sounds and smells of the processes — the clacking of the typewriter, the chemical agents used for the offset press, brought back happy memories of his teen years when he held a job working in a printing shop. He held up the first plate, reviewing the cover and back page images for defects. His newsletter, Off The Grid, had attracted thousands of subscribers. The newsletter combined tips on lifestyle design, financial planning, and even philosophy. Partly written by Gene, but combining content mailed in by readers, the newsletter helped make the case for living off the grid, taught people how to do it economically, how to become independent, and how to adjust socially. Some readers were ex-corporate types like Gene himself, while others were survivalists and back-to-land extremists.

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“However, I never received that email,” Mike said. “Instead, I received an email that sent me more than a thousand miles away on a wild goose chase, and thanks to the winter storm, it was a week before I got back. When I did, I found that my access to the ELOPe project had been removed, and David was on vacation, off the grid in New Mexico.” “Did ELOPe send you to New Mexico?” Sean asked, one eyebrow raised. “No, no, that was a planned vacation we do every year. When I got back from vacation, Mike and I discussed what had happened to him. We also discovered that my access to the ELOPe code had been turned off as well.

Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations
by Garr Reynolds
Published 14 Aug 2010

You are never too old to learn to play an instrument. • Get completely unplugged and off the grid—no iPhones or BlackBerrys, and the like. Go for a walk, a hike, a bike ride, or whatever it is that allows you to slow your busy mind. What if a brilliant idea hits you and you can’t record it? What if you see a remarkable example and can’t take a picture of it? Don’t worry about it. Getting off the grid and freeing up your mind (and pockets) is necessary for the flow of ideas, too. Your journey includes time off the grid too. istockphoto.com 000001067505 • When you go for walks in nature, keep a keen eye out for the balance, colors, lines, shapes, and so forth that most people never notice.

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The only competition is with yourself. Most of us never learned the design and visual communication strategies we need today. But it’s never too late to learn. Regardless of how old you are, you’re never “too old” to learn and improve. To evaluate your starting point—and later assess your improvement—you need to stop, take time off the grid, and reflect on where you are now and on how you want to improve. In Japan there is a reflection process called hansei, which is a kind of downtime of introspection and self-reflection during which people think about the current situation or project—even if things are going well—and brainstorm ways to improve it.

pages: 309 words: 78,361

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth
by Juliet B. Schor
Published 12 May 2010

Urbanites are moving far beyond herbs and vegetables, by planting fruit trees, putting chickens in their backyards, and keeping bees. People are also going off the grid, with solar panels and passive solar design, geothermal pumps, windmills, and wood pellet and corncob stoves. The alternative energy movement is expanding beyond heat and electricity into appliances. Individuals are building solar ovens and fridges, and even biodigesters, machines that turn household waste into energy to fuel an eco-kitchen. These trends have new names, too: microfarming and microgeneration for self-produced energy. Fourteen percent of additions to solar capacity in 2008 were in off-the-grid installations. Self-provisioning is also getting popular in housing.

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A global movement called Transition Towns is helping small locales transform themselves to become self-reliant. The Post Carbon Cities network, which has a similar mission, is active from Spokane to Nevada City to Alachua County, Florida. There are also homegrown efforts. A few years ago, people in rural areas of Northern California began conversations to create an “off the grid” network of farms and businesses. One participant is Paul West, a maverick from a conservative Southern family who’d already been through one career as a successful public relations executive in Manhattan’s fashion industry, as well as a second at an environmental NGO. West became convinced that we are moving toward a radically different economy, and in 2007 joined others in Northern California to take part in a conversation that, in his words, had already begun to “think the unthinkable.”

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Backyard livestock has become so popular that some locales have even spawned mobile slaughtering businesses, trucks that move through neighborhoods to kill the animals on-site. A similar phenomenon is happening with energy. People are installing solar collectors and corncob and wood pellet stoves. They’re opting into green energy sources available from their utilities. Some are going off the grid, or tapping into wind and geothermal power. They’re insulating their homes, installing LEDs, downsizing their spaces, and designing smart buildings that take advantage of free cooling and heating from nature through wind, sun, and shade. They’re microgenerators rejecting the inevitability of fossil fuels.

Presentation Zen
by Garr Reynolds
Published 15 Jan 2012

They often fail to bring anything unique, creative, or new to the presentation. This is not because they are not smart or creative beings, but because they did not have the time alone to slow down and contemplate the problem. Seeing the big picture and finding your core message may take some time alone “off the grid.” There are many ways to find solitude, and you don’t even have to be alone. I find a very pleasant form of solitude, for example, at a Starbucks in central Osaka, where the friendly staff know me by name. It’s a bustling café but also cozy and relaxing with loads of overstuffed sofas and chairs and jazz playing softly in the background.

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Peter Drucker said it best: “The computer is a moron.” You and your ideas (and your audience) are all that matter. So try getting away from the computer in the early stages when your creativity is needed most. For me, clarity of thinking and the generation of ideas come when my computer and I are far apart. The purpose behind getting off the grid, slowing down, and using paper or whiteboards during the preparation stage is to better identify, clarify, and crystallize your core message. Again, if your audience remembers only one thing, what should that be? And why? By getting your ideas down and your key message absolutely clear in your mind and on paper first, you’ll be able to organize and design slides and other multimedia that support and magnify your content.

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• Use paper and pens or a whiteboard to record and sketch out your ideas. • Key questions: What’s your main (core) point? Why does it matter? • If your audience remembers only one thing, what should it be? • Preparing a detailed handout keeps you from feeling compelled to cram everything into your visuals. 4. Crafting the Story During your time off the grid, you brainstormed alone or perhaps with a small group of people. You stepped back to get the big picture, and you identified your core message. You now have a clearer picture of the presentation content and focus even if you do not have all the details worked out yet. The next step is to give your core message and supporting messages a logical structure.

Discover Maui
by Lonely Planet

Further north, Hawaiian history and swanky exclusivity have formed an intriguing, sometimes uneasy, alliance in Kapalua, where a world-class resort preens between a lush mountain watershed, a PGA golf course, an ancient burial ground and several gorgeous beaches. To escape any semblance of a ‘scene,’ hunker down in Kahana or Napili, lovely seaside communities known for their condos and budget-friendly prices. For off-the-grid excitement, only one adventure will do – a breezy, sometimes hair-raising, drive around the untamed northern coast. Kapalua Beach (Click here) PHOTOGRAPHER: DOUGLAS PEEBLES/PHOTOLIBRARY Top of chapter West Maui Itineraries Two Days Kaʻanapali Beach (Click here ) Begin by jumping into the water at West Maui’s hottest spot for sand and sun.

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There are no formal opening hours, but the church is typically unlocked during the day. Sleeping & Eating TEA HOUSE Cottage $$ Offline map ( 572-5610; www.mauiteahouse.com; Hoolawa Rd; s/d $135/150) Built with walls recycled from a Zen temple, this one-of-a-kind cottage is so secluded it’s off the grid and uses its own solar power to stoke up the lights. Yet it has everything you’ll need, including a kitchen with gas burners and an open-air shower in a redwood gazebo. The grounds also contain a Tibetan-style stupa with a spectacular cliff-top ocean view and a second cottage that rents by the week ($500).

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This chapter starts with time-honored Hana, where you’ll relearn the meaning of s-l-o-w and talk story with people who actually take the time. Beyond Hana lies Wailua Falls, the most stunning roadside waterfall on the entire island, and the cool forested trails of ʻOheʻo Gulch. In sleepy Kipahulu, discover the gravesite of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh and savor organic snacks at off-the-grid farms. A fitting finale to it all is the adventurous romp along the Piʻilani Hwy and through the cowboy village of Kaupo. Wailua Falls (Click here) PHOTOGRAPHER: DOUGLAS PEEBLES/PHOTOLIBRARY Top of chapter Hana & East Maui Itineraries One Day Hana Town Center (Click here ) If you’ve got one day it’s all about slowing down to experience Hana’s aloha.

Hawaii
by Jeff Campbell
Published 4 Nov 2009

O’ahu, Kailua Bay (Click here) O’ahu, Waimea Bay (Click here) O’ahu, Makaha Beach (Click here) The Big Island, Hapuna Beach (Click here) The Big Island, Makalawena Beach (Click here) The Big Island, Waipi’o Valley (Click here) Maui, Big Beach (Click here) Maui, Ho’okipa Beach (Click here) Maui, Malu’aka Beach (Click here) Kaua’i, Hanalei Bay (Click here) Kaua’i, Po’ipu Beach (Click here) Kaua’i, Ke’e Beach (Click here) Moloka’i, Halawa Beach (Click here) Lana’i, Hulopo’e Beach (Click here) Ways to Go Green It’s easy to go green in Hawaii – and getting easier all the time. Here are some specific suggestions that show just how simple it is. For more on sustainable travel, Click here. Sleep off the grid on the Big Island: go primitive at Lova Lava Land (Click here) or plush at Waianuhea B&B (Click here). Rent a biofuel car on Maui: drive an eco-friendly VW Beetle from Bio-Beetle (Click here). Learn about Native Hawaiian culture in Honolulu: visit the Bishop Museum (Click here), take a class at Native Books/Nā Mea Hawai’i (Click here) and attend Waikiki’s Kuhio Beach Torch Lighting & Hula Show (Click here).

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Hawai′i is twice as big as the other islands combined. It’S the only island where you feel you’re on a road trip. Hawaii’S peoples have room to be themselves, and they ring the Big Island with personality: from multiethnic, working-class Hilo to Waimea’S paniolo (cowboy) country, from funkadelic Puna to rural, off-the-grid Ka′u, from South Kona’S Japanese coffee farmers to North Kohala’S writers and artists. Hawai′i is steeped in ancient history. The first Polynesians landed here, and Kamehameha was born here. So many ancient sites are preserved, and so well, that it takes little imagination to conjure helmeted warriors and Captain Cook, bays full of outrigger canoes and the terror of the gods.

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The relaxed common room has a library and large-screen TV (with DVDs), and there’S a lounge-worthy, secluded lanai. The delicious highlight, though, is the full, homemade organic breakfast. It’S between the 3- and 4-mile markers on Hwy 240. Waianuhea B&B (775-1118, 888-775-2577; www.waianuhea.com; 45-3503 Kahana Dr; r $195-400; ) Solar-powered, off-the-grid living doesn’t get more artfully luxurious than this. Enjoy magazine-quality interior design in each of the five rooms, with color schemes playing off dramatic art pieces. Amenities include flat-screen TVs, cell phones, robes and yoga mats; several have wood stoves, one a view from its soaking tub.

pages: 476 words: 132,042

What Technology Wants
by Kevin Kelly
Published 14 Jul 2010

Amish religious belief is founded on the principle that they should remain “in the world, not of it” and so should remain separate in as many ways as possible. Being tied to electricity tied them into the world, so they forfeited electrical benefits in order to stay outside the world. Visiting many Amish households even today, you’ll see no power lines weaving toward their homes. They live off the grid. To live without electricity or cars eliminates most of what we expect from modernity. No electricity means no internet, TV, or phones, either, so suddenly the Amish life stands in stark contrast to our complex modern lives. But when you visit an Amish farm, that simplicity vanishes. Indeed, the simplicity vanishes even before you get to the farm.

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Previously, the Amish would build a shanty at the end of their driveway that housed an answering machine and phone to be shared by neighbors. The shanty sheltered the caller from rain and cold and kept the grid away from the house, and the long walk outside reduced phone use to essential calls rather than gossip and chatting. Cell phones are a new twist. You get a phone without wires, off the grid. As one Amish guy told me, “What is the difference if I stand in my phone booth with a wireless phone or stand outside with a cell phone? There’s no difference.” Further, cell phones have been embraced by women, who can keep in touch with their far-flung families, since they don’t drive. And the bishops have noticed that the cell phone is so small it can be kept hidden, which is a concern for a people dedicated to discouraging individualism.

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And the bishops have noticed that the cell phone is so small it can be kept hidden, which is a concern for a people dedicated to discouraging individualism. The Amish have still not decided on the cell phone. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say they have decided “maybe.” For people who live off the grid, without TV, internet, or books beyond one Bible, the Amish are perplexingly well informed. There’s not much I could tell them that they didn’t know about and already have an opinion on. And surprisingly, there’s not much new that at least one person in their church has not tried to use. In fact, the Amish rely on the enthusiasm of those early adopters to try stuff out until it proves harmful.

pages: 552 words: 168,518

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World
by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
Published 28 Sep 2010

Despite these investments, the Frasers are not entirely off the grid yet. In 2007, they generated 35 percent of the energy they used over the course of the year. In winter months like December, when the days are short and cold, solar-generated energy accounted for only 7 percent of total household consumption. But in the month of May, solar power supplied over 94 percent of what they needed. By doubling the battery storage, the Frasers claim they could live off the grid for four months out of the year. And with the addition of a wind turbine generator, they could get off the grid completely. Not bad for Canada, where household heating is the largest single source of carbon emissions and a large share of the average family’s monthly budget.

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Second, governments have begun to offer serious incentives that could make decentralized energy production and self-sufficient homes and buildings a viable, even lucrative, proposition. Third, social entrepreneurs like One Block Off the Grid have come up with collective purchasing arrangements to help further lower the costs of solar technology for consumers. By using the Web to aggregate hundreds of potential solar customers in a given city, the San Francisco–based start-up claims it is able to lower the cost of installations by 15 percent. The company completed six hundred installations in ten cities in 2009 and expects to complete over five thousand in 2010. Even with innovative initiatives like One Block Off the Grid, there is still a major role for government in scaling green energy.

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Chapter 6 lays out the most daunting of challenges: weaning the world of its dangerous addiction to fossil fuels and building a new green energy economy that can sustain human civilization for centuries to come. You’ll learn why applying open-source principles to the energy grid is the best way to ramp up the supply of green power. We’ll also meet a new generation of energy prosumers that provide a signpost to a future where all homes and buildings generate enough of their own power to live off the grid entirely. Chapter 7 hones in on our broken, industrial age models of transportation. We explain how principles like openness, collaboration, and sustainability can help guide us toward a transportation system that is safe, efficient, intelligent, and networked. We’ll also take a peek at the car of the future and we’ll get the scoop on what über- entrepreneurs like Shai Agassi (former SAP exec and founder of Better Place) and Robin Chase (founder of Zipcar) are doing to usher in radical new models for personal transport.

pages: 273 words: 85,195

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
by Jessica Bruder
Published 18 Sep 2017

A sense of opportunity, as wide as the country itself. A bone-deep conviction that something better will come. It’s just ahead, in the next town, the next gig, the next chance encounter with a stranger. As it happens, some of those strangers are nomads, too. When they meet—online, or at a job, or camping way off the grid—tribes begin to form. There’s a common understanding, a kinship. When someone’s van breaks down, they pass the hat. There’s a contagious feeling: Something big is happening. The country is changing rapidly, the old structures crumbling away, and they’re at the epicenter of something new. Around a shared campfire, in the middle of the night, it can feel like a glimpse of utopia.

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She wanted to construct an Earthship: a passive-solar home built using discarded materials such as cans and bottles, with dirt-filled tires for its load-bearing walls. Invented by radical New Mexico architect Michael Reynolds, who has been tinkering with them since the 1970s, Earthships are designed to sustain their inhabitants entirely off the grid. The tire walls act like batteries, absorbing the sun’s heat through a bank of south-facing windows during the daytime and then releasing it at night to regulate indoor temperature. Rain and snowmelt drain from the roof into a cistern, providing water that gets filtered and reused for drinking and washing, feeding indoor fruit and vegetable gardens and flushing toilets.

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“When I moved into the van, I realized that everything that society had told me was a lie—that I had to get married and live in a house with a white picket fence and go to work, and then be happy at the very end of my life, but be miserable until then,” he told me in an interview. “I was happy for the first time ever living in my van.” In 2005, Bob started CheapRVLiving.com. The website began as a modest collection of how-to articles for readers hoping to live in a vehicle on a shoestring budget. The key was “boondocking”: going off the grid rather than relying on the kind of hookups for water, sewage, and electricity that come with a paid spot in an RV park. (Though its informal usage has broadened, the word “boondocking”—as purists will quickly point out—also implies that one is parked way out in the wilderness. Vehicle dwellers who are doing this sort of thing in cities are technically not boondocking—they’re “stealth parking” or “stealth camping.”

pages: 259 words: 84,261

Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World
by Mo Gawdat
Published 29 Sep 2021

In the Middle of Nowhere To begin, I want you to imagine yourself and a frail old version of me sitting in the wilderness next to a campfire in the year 2055, exactly ninety-nine years since the story of artificial intelligence began at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, in the summer of 1956. I’m telling you the story of what I have witnessed through the years of the rise of AI – a story that has led us both to be sitting here in the middle of nowhere. But I’m not going to tell you till the end of this book if we are there because we are staying off the grid to escape the machines, or if we are there because AI has relieved us of our mundane work responsibilities and allowed us the time, safety and freedom to just enjoy being in nature, doing what humans do best – connecting and contemplating. I won’t tell you yet simply because, at this current moment, I don’t know how our story with the machines will end.

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We are sitting in front of a campfire in the middle of nowhere and I told you that only by the end of the book will you know if we are here in the wilderness because we are hiding from the machines or because the machines have helped us build a utopia where we can feel safe everywhere, where we don’t have to work too hard and where we have an abundance of time to enjoy nature fully. I am guessing that you are now expecting it to be the former. I understand. Our fictional imagination has painted a grim outlook for how our future may manifest. But please don’t panic and try to escape off the grid just yet. Keep reading and allow me to explain the logic behind each of those inevitabilities, one by one, and when we agree on what is likely to happen, then we can discuss what we can do about it. Rest assured that, despite what we’ve gotten ourselves into, I am confident there is a path that can lead us out of it and into the utopia that we all deserve.

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But before I do, let me take you back to the Introduction of this book when I asked you to imagine that we are both sitting near a campfire in the middle of nowhere in the year 2055, as I tell you the way our story with superintelligence has unfolded up to then. I did not tell you at the beginning if we are sitting there because we need to be off the grid to hide from the machines or because the machines are taking such good care of us that we are living in a utopia where our planet’s nature is thriving and we no longer need to do mundane work, thus allowing us to spend time in nature doing what humans do best – connecting and contemplating. It’s time for you to find out why we are here.

pages: 210 words: 56,667

The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity From Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters and Other Informal Entrepreneurs
by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips
Published 23 Jun 2015

This bridging of worlds is apparent in RUNA’s advisers—a former executive, Tim Sullivan, who ran global logistics for PepsiCo and founded ZICO coconut water, as well as indigenous elders. GETTING OFF THE GRID As we’ve seen with Gib Bulloch’s experience in Macedonia or Tyler Gage’s adventure in the Amazon, time away can jump-start creativity and reflection because you are able to tune in to yourself at a deeper level. Increasingly, “hermit time” is sought by many young entrepreneurs who are finding inspiration by getting off the grid entirely, at least for short periods of time. “Digital detox” weekends and retreats, where people abandon technology and hold space for reflection, have become common.

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But what the New Hive story points to is the power that spending time outside of society can have in catalyzing creativity and entrepreneurial vision. “Being isolated gave us time and space to discuss our different ways of seeing the world, get a lot of work done undistracted, and meditate and brainstorm on long walks in nature,” Verdin shared. Their start-up has a more existential quality due to their time off the grid. While some start-ups may be solely looking to cash in on the next social networking craze or build a myopic app, New Hive feels like it has a bit more soul. “We are trying to maintain a place on the Web where the Internet can be truly weird,” Verdin told us. THE ITCH TO ESCAPE ISN’T just for hermit wannabes or aspiring entrepreneurs.

pages: 337 words: 96,666

Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World
by Michal Zalewski
Published 11 Jan 2022

The final tax-related observation is that some assets used for business purposes—including rental property—can be gradually depreciated for wear and tear, offsetting the income that the business manages to generate on other fronts. On the flip side, real estate is one of the few asset classes subject to a direct wealth tax. As most homeowners know, your state will send you a hefty annual tax bill for the privilege of owning property, even if it’s an off-the-grid cabin in the woods. * Naturally, inflation can have many causes. For example, prices can rise if there’s a reduction in the availability of raw materials used to manufacture goods. That said, such fluctuations are different from regulators setting explicit inflationary targets and tweaking monetary policy until they achieve the intended goal

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On the other hand, if you spend much of your waking hours at work or at school, the wisdom of keeping a bag of supplies locked in the bedroom closet should be called into question; putting some items in the trunk of the car may be a better bet. Unnecessary complexity in your plans should be called out too. For example, for short-term emergencies, ready-to-eat foods are far better than an elaborate off-the-grid cooking plan. Facing the Final Contingency As hinted in Chapter 2, you simply can’t cheat fate in some situations—and in such circumstances, a will is a natural extension of your “living” contingency plans. This is particularly important if your spouse, children, or other loved ones depend on you for support.

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Fridges filled to the brim with fine caviar notwithstanding, a more solemn example is a family that depends on lifesaving medical equipment that must remain plugged in at all times, or that needs to preserve perishable medications for everyday use. But in the general case, the payoff for whole-house generators or off-the-grid energy storage just isn’t there, making the pursuit of energy independence an interesting hobby for the affluent but an ill-advised expense for the average Joe. With the prices of batteries and solar panels coming down every year, this will eventually change. Until then, let’s have a look some of the more cost-efficient ways of dealing with a disruption to discretionary energy needs while stuck at home.

pages: 526 words: 155,174

Sixty Days and Counting
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Published 27 Feb 2007

But is that enough? The van won’t look weird to toll gates for not having the box, or anything like that?” “No. Not every vehicle has these things yet. So far, the total information society is not yet fully online. When it is, you won’t be able to do stuff like this. You’ll never be able to get off the grid, and if you did it would look so strange it would be worse than being on the grid. Everything will have to be rethought.” Frank grimaced. “Well, by then I won’t be involved in this kind of stuff. Listen, I think I’m going to take off now and get a few hours of driving in. It’ll take me all of tomorrow to get there as it is.”

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She glanced at him, hesitated, took another drink. She frowned, thinking things over again. Their knees were pressed together, and their hands had found each other on their own and were clutched together, as if to protest any plan their owners might make that would separate them. “I really think you should come with me,” she said. “Get off the grid entirely.” Frank struggled for thought. “I can’t,” he said at last. She grimaced. She seemed to be getting irritated with him, the pressure of her hand’s grip almost painful. Worse yet, she let go of him, straightened up. She was somehow becoming estranged, withdrawing from him. Even angry at him.

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It was not possible to sleep there, for instance, without security noticing and dropping by to check on him. Meanwhile his van was probably still GPSed and would be one of the ways that Edward Cooper was keeping track of him. He needed it for a bedroom and to get out to the Khembalis, and yet he wanted to be able to drop off the grid every day when he left work. He didn’t know. Show up to work, work, disappear, then show up again the next day. This was important, given the things that were happening. What would happen if he got Edgardo’s help to take all the transponders out of his van? But that would alert Cooper that Frank knew the chips were there and had removed them.

pages: 229 words: 72,431

Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day
by Craig Lambert
Published 30 Apr 2015

The shadow tasks might fall equally on both sexes, but in the case of women, especially working wives and mothers, they land on shoulders already overburdened with other duties. LIFE OFF THE GRID, AND VERY MUCH ON IT Let’s consider two extreme examples of lifestyles that reject or minimize shadow work. They are polar opposites: One way of living keeps shadow work at bay with an ethic of self-sufficiency; the other delegates nearly all shadow work to others. Not surprisingly, the two occupy opposite ends of the country’s economic spectrum. The first alternative finds its purest form in those who live “off the grid”—in other words, without connecting to electric utilities and avoiding natural gas and heating oil.

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The rarified set wealthy enough to practice the DNY lifestyle, in Beverly Hills or anywhere else, can turn shadow work inside out. They delegate shadow tasks to their staffs and free their own time for their allegedly higher callings, as Elaine explained. These people exist at the antipode from the DIY pioneers living “off the grid.” As the two groups occupy opposite ends of the economic spectrum, in monetary terms, their time has a drastically different value. Yet both have dealt with shadow work, in one case by taking responsibility for everything, in the other by delegating it all to paid help. THE VALUE OF TIME Labor economists like Richard Freeman of Harvard University think constantly about the allocation of time.

pages: 160 words: 39,966

January Fifteenth
by Rachel Swirsky
Published 13 Jun 2022

Interview the protestors wherever they are this year. Interview the protestors protesting the other protestors wherever they are this year. The stories weren’t all terrible. Her legitimate, non-cynical, favorite piece had been “interview an ex-con who spent her UBI on land and a trailer so she can live off the grid and make pots.” Interesting, specific, quirky. Of course, that had been the first year—and of course, none of the aggregators had ever wanted a follow-up. Still, Janelle and Dynasty had clicked, and Janelle called her up for a chat every UBI Day. So, hey, her job had been good for something at least once.

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Janelle and Nevaeh, full of ice cream, returned home with a few minutes to spare before the call with Dynasty. Their disbursement checks lay on the counter with the other mail. Janelle pulled down the wavve projector over her desk. “You’ll like Dynasty,” Janelle told Nevaeh. “She lives in Missouri, off the grid in a little trailer. You should know she was in jail for a while, so be a little careful about what you say.” “I don’t have a problem with ex-cons,” protested Nevaeh. “I know, but it’s better to be forewarned,” Janelle replied. She did not add: Also, my darling, you have an enormous mouth and an itsy-bitsy sense of tact.

Southwest USA Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Today, outdoorsy types hike and ski in the surrounding mountains while history buffs wander Carson’s home and the Taos Pueblo. Georgia O’Keeffe and DH Lawrence led the artists’ charge, and now more than 80 galleries line the streets. Carl Jung and Dennis Hopper? Maybe they came for the quirky individualism, seen today in the wonderfully eccentric Adobe Bar and the off-the-grid Earthship community. Earthship community PETER PTSCHELINZEW/LONELY PLANET IMAGES © Carlsbad Caverns National Park 13 As the elevator drops, it’s hard to comprehend the ranger’s words. Wait, what? We’re plunging the length of the Empire State Building? I’m not sure that’s such a great idea.

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Not all are tourist attractions, but several offer unique experiences that may be among your most memorable in the Southwest. Marvel at the mesa-top views at Acoma, shop for jewelry at Zuni and immerse yourself in history at the Taos Pueblo – where the fry bread at Tewa’s makes a tasty distraction. ANN CECIL/LONELY PLANET IMAGES © Hwy 50: The Loneliest Road in America 23 You say you want to drop off the grid? Are you sure? Test your resolve on this desolate strip of pavement that stretches across the white-hot belly of Nevada. The highway passes through a poetic assortment of tumbleweed towns following the route of the Overland Stagecoach, the Pony Express and the first transcontinental telephone line.

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Hwy 89/89A: Wickenburg to Sedona 120 miles The Old West meets the New West on this drive past dude ranches, mining towns, art galleries and stylish wineries. Billy the Kid Highway 84 miles This outlaw loop shoots through Billy the Kid’s old stomping grounds. Kayenta-Monument Valley Scenic Road 40 miles Star in your own western on an iconic drive past cinematic red rocks in Navajo Country. Highway 50: The Loneliest Road 320 miles An off -the-grid ramble mixing the quirky, historic and dry lonesome in tumbleweed Nevada. Million Dollar Highway 25 miles There’s gold in them thar mountain views, but don’t squint too hard or you might run off the ro-whoa! High Road to Taos 85 miles Drive into your own landscape painting on this picturesque mountain romp between Santa Fe and Taos.

Colorado
by Lonely Planet

After hiking about a half-mile, the road curves up to the left and heads south to the Lucky Mine. The Mt Princeton Trail will be on the right; follow it all the way to the summit. Sleeping From free riverside campsites to sweet off the grid B&Bs to hot spring resorts big and small, you’ll find a nest that feels right. Las Manos B&B B&B $$ ( 719-395-4567; www.lasmanosbandb.com; 32889 Co Rd 371; ste $125-185; ) A simple and sweet B&B in an award winning green home, set off the grid outside of Buena Vista. Each of the two suites has blonde wood floors and features a large deck for taking in sweeping mountain views. Rates vary depending upon the time of year.

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If you’re driving between Denver and Rocky Mountain National Park, definitely consider this route. NEDERLAND POP 1100 / ELEV 8236FT From Boulder, the devastatingly scenic 17-mile route through Boulder Canyon emerges in the lively, ramshackle little berg of Nederland, a mountain-town magnet for hippies looking to get off the grid. These days, Nederland has a sagging, happenstantial quality to its weather-beaten buildings, which are not without a certain rugged charm. There are several worthwhile restaurants and bars which feed the hungry skiers and hikers heading to or from Eldora Ski Area, Indian Peaks Wilderness Area or coming down the Peak to Peak Hwy.

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It has free maps of all the area trails and campsites as well as complete information about degree of difficulty and trail conditions. Do not head up to the wilderness area without the proper information from the USFS and the appropriate equipment. THE MINTURN MILE If you’re itching to head off the grid, consider the Minturn Mile. One of the most famous ‘out-of-bounds’ ski runs in the world, you can access it from the top of chairs 3 or 7 on Vail Mountain (Click here). At the top of the turn on the ‘Lost Boy Trail’ take the access gate and begin a descent of 3 miles to Minturn. Advanced skills are a must as you’ll encounter a wide range of terrain – starting in a bowl and veering through the trees.

pages: 305 words: 93,091

The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data
by Kevin Mitnick , Mikko Hypponen and Robert Vamosi
Published 14 Feb 2017

The good news is that all three are interoperational. That means that no matter which version of PGP you use, the basic functions are the same. When Edward Snowden first decided to disclose the sensitive data he’d copied from the NSA, he needed the assistance of like-minded people scattered around the world. Paradoxically, he needed to get off the grid while still remaining active on the Internet. He needed to become invisible. Even if you don’t have state secrets to share, you might be interested in keeping your e-mails private. Snowden’s experience and that of others illustrate that it isn’t easy to do that, but it is possible, with proper diligence.

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All these steps are necessary to be invisible on a public terminal. CHAPTER NINE You Have No Privacy? Get Over It! At some point during the time that former antivirus software creator John McAfee spent as a fugitive from authorities in Belize, he started a blog. Take it from me: if you’re trying to get off the grid and totally disappear, you don’t want to start a blog. For one thing, you’re bound to make a mistake. McAfee is a smart man. He made his fortune in the early days of Silicon Valley by pioneering antivirus research. Then he sold his company, sold all his assets in the United States, and for around four years, from 2008 to 2012, he lived in Belize, on a private estate off the coast.

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Anyone can use this tool—it’s native in the file inspector on Apple OSX and in downloadable tools such as FOCA for Windows and Metagoofil for Linux—to gain access to the metadata stored in photos and documents. Sometimes it’s not a photo but an app that gives up your spot. In the summer of 2015, drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaped from a Mexican prison and immediately went off the grid. Or did he? Two months after his escape—from Mexico’s maximum-security Altiplano prison—El Chapo’s twenty-nine-year-old son, Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, posted an image to Twitter. Although the two men seated at a dinner table with Salazar are obscured by emoticons, the build of the man on the left bears a strong resemblance to El Chapo.

Hawaii Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

oAkiko's Buddhist Bed & BreakfastB&B, RENTAL HOUSE ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %808-963-6422; www.akikosbnb.com; 29-2091 Old Mamalahoa Hwy; s/d incl breakfast from $65/75, cottage $65-85, house from $150; W)S Immersed in tropical foliage, this peaceful retreat offers a variety of lovely, fashionably austere accommodations. The B&B rooms, with shared bath, are simple and clean, while two off-the-grid studio cottages allow a rare indoor-outdoor experience. For those seeking more space and privacy, the well-kept Hale Aloha house, with full kitchen, three bedrooms and two baths, is great value. Most compelling might be owner Akiko Masuda, who invites guests to join morning meditation and coordinates a popular New Year's Eve mochi (Japanese rice cake) pounding festival.

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Green bursts through the soil and weaves itself into thick forests of wood rooted in lava soil. The ocean beats like a hammer on the Big Island’s easternmost cliffs, and edges back as lava flows into the ocean. Who lives here? Hippies, funky artists, alternative healers, Hawaiian sovereignty activists, pakalolo (marijuana) growers, organic farmers and off-the-grid survivalists. A nickname for all these folks, which they have adopted themselves, is Punatics. They exhibit a disconcerting blend of laid-back apathy to the world and intense emotions. Puna 1Sights 1Fuku-Bonsai Cultural CenterB1 2Kehena BeachC3 3Kumukahi LighthouseD2 4Lava Tree State Monument ParkC2 5Lava Viewing AreaB4 6MacKenzie State Recreation AreaC3 7Makuʻu Craft & Farmers MarketC2 8Star of the Sea ChurchC3 2Activities, Courses & Tours 9Ahalanui Beach ParkD3 10Jeff Hunt SurfboardsC1 11Kapoho Tide PoolsD2 12Kazumura Cave ToursA3 Kilauea Caverns of FireB2 13Pahoa Community Aquatic CenterC1 14Paradissimo Tropical SpaD1 4Sleeping 15Absolute Paradise B&BC3 16Butterfly InnB1 17Eco Hostel HawaiiB2 18Hale Moana B&BC3 19Hawaiian SanctuaryC2 20HedonisiaC3 21Jungle FarmhouseC2 22Kalani Oceanside RetreatC3 23RamashalaC3 5Eating 24FoodlandB1 25Hilo Coffee MillB2 26Hot Dog GuyC3 27Island NaturalsD1 28Kaleo's Bar & GrillD1 Keaʻau Natural FoodsB1 29Luquin's Mexican RestaurantD1 30Ning's Thai CuisineD1 31Pahoa Fresh FishC2 32Paolo's BistroD1 33Sirius Coffee ConnectionC1 6Drinking & Nightlife 34Black Rock CafeC1 35Uncle Robert's Awa BarB4 3Entertainment 36Akebono TheaterD1 37SPACEC3 7Shopping 38Big Island BookBuyersD1 39Dan De Luz's WoodsB2 SPACE Farmers MarketB4 THE JUNE 27 LAVA FLOW At the time of writing, a lava flow that erupted from Kilauea on June 27, 2014 was still creeping across Puna.

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This sparse littoral zone abuts the deep blue Pacific, itself a hazy band under an endless sky. We'll be frank: this isn't where you go for tons of warm aloha or, at least, not the openly given sort you find in more touristed areas. Here at the under-tip, locals fiercely protect their rural, stay-away-from-it-all culture, quashing coastal resorts, lobbying for protected land, pioneering off-the-grid living, and speaking lots of pidgin. In many ways this is an island within an island, adding intrigue to any itinerary. Ka‘u 1Top Sights 1Honomalino BeachA1 2Ka LaeB3 1Sights 3Green Sands BeachB3 Kalalea HeiauB3 4Kaʻu Coffee MillD1 5Kawa BayC2 6Lua ʻO PalehemoB3 7Manuka State Wayside & Natural Area ReserveA2 8Miloliʻi Beach ParkA1 9Punaluʻu Beach ParkC2 10Road to the SeaA2 11Whittington Beach ParkC2 12Wood Valley TempleD1 2Activities, Courses & Tours 13Glover & Kona TrailsB2 14Kula Kai CavernsA2 15Palm TrailB2 16Puʻu o Lokuana TrailB2 4Sleeping 17KalaekilohanaB2 DON'T MISS KAʻALAIKI ROAD If travelling between Pahala and Naʻalehu, get off Hwy 11 and take the mauka (inland) backroad.

pages: 210 words: 55,131

Organized Simplicity
by Tsh Oxenreider
Published 3 Nov 2010

They offer smart moves toward a healthier planet and healthier families. But the basic problem beneath these trends is that they feel like they ask so much of us. These ideas ask us to move into a world that feels impossible for everyday families who still want to participate in Little League, and who don’t really want to live off the grid. Sell your cars and transport your family around on bikes. It’s a great idea if you live in a metropolis with convenient public transportation, or in a tiny town with errands no more than a few miles away. But more than 50 percent of Americans live in the suburbs.6 I’m not sure too many of those folks are privy to abandoning their motor vehicles.

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The items in our homes that we feel we absolutely “need” are downright extravagances within the global landscape. So if we keep these luxuries — our ACs, our gargantuan refrigerators, our deep freezers in the garage, and our clothes dryers — what does it really look like to simplify? Here’s What Simple Living Is Not 1. Living on a Homestead, Off the Grid, or Without Electricity or Cars It’s true — there are a few hardy, modern-day homesteaders in the Western world who manage to live without refrigerators, who ride bicycles everywhere (kids included), and who reuse their toilet paper. It’s what they want, and best wishes to them. Most of us can’t voluntarily swallow that pill.

San Francisco
by Lonely Planet

Junior Foodies When spirits and feet begin to drag, there’s plenty of ice cream and kid-friendly meals to pick them back up – look for the symbol throughout this book. But discerning young diners may prefer finger sandwiches and tea cakes at Crown & Crumpet (Click here ) or the food-truck gourmet dining at Off the Grid ( Click here ). For more of a culinary challenge, 18 Reasons ( Click here ) offers classes on pickles and stinky cheeses, Humphry Slocombe ( Click here ) has freaky ice cream flavors, and the Ferry Building ( Click here ) lets kids graze gourmet goods from farmers and top chefs. Active Kids Golden Gate Park is a dream come true for kids with energy to burn.

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Chef Eskender Aseged’s Radio Africa Kitchen (www.radioafricakitchen.com) serves creative, organic Mediterranean-African fusion, Ken-Ken Ramen (www.twitter.com/kenkenramen) makes slow-cooked, sustainable Japanese noodles, and ForageSF (www.foragesf.com) makes dinner with foraged ingredients. Look for announcements on EaterSF (http://sf.eater.com) , Grub Street San Francisco (http://sanfrancisco.grubstreet.com) and Inside Scoop (http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com) for upcoming pop-ups. Food Trucks & Carts SF’s largest gathering of gourmet trucks is Off the Grid ( Click here ), where 30 food trucks circle their wagons. Trucks and carts are cash-only businesses, and lines for popular trucks can take 10 to 20 minutes. Look for prominently displayed permits as your guarantee of proper food preparation, refrigeration and regulated working conditions. For the best gourmet to go, try clamshell buns stuffed with duck and mango from Chairman Bao (www.facebook.com/chair manbao), free-range herbed roast chicken from Roli Roti (www.roliroti.com), organic Korean tacos from Namu (Click here ) and dessert from Kara’s Cupcakes ( Click here ) and the Créme Bruleé Cart (www.twitter.com/creme bruleecart) .

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Best for NorCal Cuisine Chez Panisse (Click here) French Laundry ( Click here ) Commonwealth ( Click here ) Jardinière ( Click here ) Delfina ( Click here ) Boulevard ( Click here ) Best al Fresco Frisco Boulette’s Larder ( Click here ) Café Claude ( Click here ) Starbelly ( Click here ) Il Cane Rosso ( Click here ) Cafe Flore ( Click here ) Belden Place ( Click here ) Best Meals under $10 Off the Grid ( Click here ) Rosamunde Sausage Grill ( Click here ) Blue Barn Gourmet ( Click here ) Saigon Sandwich Shop ( Click here ) Udupi Palace ( Click here ) Best Local Organic Fusion Namu ( Click here ) Slanted Door ( Click here ) Acquerello ( Click here ) Juhu Beach Club ( Click here ) Mission Chinese ( Click here ) Best for Foodie Gifts Bi-Rite ( Click here ) Loyal Army Clothing ( Click here ) Rainbow ( Click here ) Ferry Building ( Click here ) City Discount ( Click here ) Le Sanctuaire ( Click here ) Best for Dessert Humphry Slocombe ( Click here ) Chantal Guillon Macarons ( Click here ) Three Twins Ice Cream ( Click here ) Kara’s Cupcakes ( Click here ) Miette ( Click here ) Best for Brunch Out the Door ( Click here ) Brenda’s French Soul Food ( Click here ) Suppenküche ( Click here ) Butler & the Chef ( Click here ) Mission Beach Cafe ( Click here ) Best for Lunch Barbacco ( Click here ) Bocadillos ( Click here ) Sentinel ( Click here ) Boxed Foods ( Click here ) Split Pea Seduction ( Click here ) Best Taquerias & SF-Mex Chilango ( Click here ) Little Chihuahua ( Click here ) Mijita ( Click here ) Pancho Villa ( Click here ) Best Reinvented American Classics Burgers: Zuni Cafe ( Click here ) Fries: Spruce ( Click here ) Pizza: Zero Zero ( Click here ) Chili: Greens ( Click here ) Hot dogs: Warming Hut ( Click here ) PB&J: Michael Mina ( Click here ) Drinking & Nightlife No matter what you’re having, SF bars, cafes and clubs are here to oblige.

San Francisco
by Lonely Planet

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pages: 203 words: 58,817

The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms
by Danielle Laporte
Published 16 Apr 2012

“Doing everything myself.” In Session 9, you’ll find “The Stop-Doing List.” Prepare for ecstatic liberation. 9. HOW MUCH MONEY WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE MAKING? Note: Heiresses and tycoons may be excused from this exercise. And possibly students. And anyone with money socked away. Oh, and forest dwellers living off the grid. It doesn’t matter what you do for a living or from where your money flows; declaring how much money you want to earn, attract, and throw down is mighty empowering. What you’re targeting is a number that would make you feel really happy. We want to avoid lurking fears of being a bag lady and zero-to-mogul delusions of grandeur.

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The brothers pray seven times a day in collective chanting and in solitude. True, most monks needn’t worry about organizing staff parties, their wardrobe stress is nil, and they’re not juggling Junior’s soccer practice and piano lessons. But the optimal concept here is passion coming before tasks. It doesn’t matter whether you’re living off the grid or high on the hog; devotion requires…devotion. How many mornings do we choose email over meditation, or let deadlines pull rank on stretching, cuddling, or a glass of water swallowed slowly and appreciated? How habitually do we override the call from the interior of our being? The call to pray, or listen, or just to be fully awake in noticing what is being said to us—whether it’s our heart, the dog, the trees, or our fellow humans speaking to us?

pages: 385 words: 111,113

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane
by Brett King
Published 5 May 2016

David Crane, 5th Annual ARPA-E Energy Summit, February 2014 Keep in mind that these comments are not coming from a solar energy company, but from inside one of the current market leaders in provision of retail electricity across the United States! If, however, we take homes, offices and factories off the grid, then storage of electricity becomes a critical element in the success of a distributed system. Recently, Tesla Motors, an automotive and energy storage company, announced that its new US$5-billion Gigafactory in Nevada will not only produce batteries for Tesla vehicles but will also sell batteries—called Powerwalls—for homes.

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Recently, Tesla Motors, an automotive and energy storage company, announced that its new US$5-billion Gigafactory in Nevada will not only produce batteries for Tesla vehicles but will also sell batteries—called Powerwalls—for homes. These batteries are designed to capture excess solar capacity throughout the day so that homes can continue to operate independent of the grid in the dark and in cloudy weather when solar capture is reduced. Figure 2.4: Will Tesla’s Powerwall be the device that powers the “off-the-grid” movement? (Credit: Tesla) Nine days after Telsa’s announcement, the company had already received 85,000 orders, worth more than US$800 million,15 for its new home battery, leading Tesla to announce that the battery is already sold out until mid-2016. The essential problem here is clear. With the adoption of solar energy and the deployment of the Tesla Powerwall or similar products, many homes will soon attempt to go off-grid.

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15 “Your voice is your passport,” STORES magazine, February 2015. 16 Recipients of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine 17 ABC News Oakland, CA, December 2014 Conclusions: Life in the Smart Lane Living in an Augmented World Every aspect of our life will be augmented by technology. From devices that monitor our health, to the way we pay for goods and services, how we spend our spare time, how we move around, how we look for advice, how we interact and how we work—it’s all fair game in the Augmented Age. Living “off the grid” will severely restrict your options, if not be impossible, and digital literacy will be a more important life skill than algebra, writing or geography. The most advanced technologies will become less visible and less intrusive, becoming smart, embedded and predictive in nature. What is life going to be like in 2030 or 2040?

pages: 43 words: 10,298

Destination Simple
by Brooke McAlary
Published 23 Dec 2016

So often we open our smartphone to take a look at something specific, but before we realise what’s happened we’ve spent twenty minutes scrolling through Instagram, checking work emails out of office hours or googling the name of the guy on The Walking Dead to see if he’s the guy from Love, Actually (for the record, he is). It’s so easy to act passively online … checking email isn’t necessarily responding or taking action, but we do it anyway. COURTNEY CARVER EXERCISE Unplugging 15–30 MINUTES 1. IDENTIFY A TIME Look at your daily schedule and find a block of 15–30 minutes when you can be off the grid. Choose a time of day when you are unlikely to receive urgent phone calls and when your boss won’t need you. 2. SCHEDULE IT Once you’ve nominated a block of time – preferably the same time each day – schedule it in your diary or calendar as your down time. 3. COMMIT TO IT Set a reminder alarm on your computer and phone.

pages: 281 words: 71,242

World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech
by Franklin Foer
Published 31 Aug 2017

He began to think about all his friends who had decamped to communes. It was easy to see why the communes grabbed hold of his imagination. Starting with the Summer of Love in 1967 and continuing through the annus horribilis of 1968, hundreds of thousands of young Americans, driven by hope and fear, went to live off the grid in self-sufficient collective communities. They sprouted villages with names like Drop City and Twin Oaks, in places like the New Mexico desert, the Tennessee mountains, and the Northern California forests. (By one estimate, the commune population swelled to 750,000 in the early seventies.) Sitting on the plane, Brand had the notion that he might drive a truck to these settlements to sell tools and other goods that would help the communards thrive.

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CHAPTER EIGHT: DEATH OF THE AUTHOR His lectures and speeches were gripping spectacles of intellect, punctuated by multimedia: Evan Osnos, “Embrace the Irony,” New Yorker, October 13, 2014. One magazine profile described him as “a kind of Internet messiah”: Simon van Zuylen-Wood, “Larry Lessig, Off the Grid,” New Republic, February 5, 2014. “Never before in the history of human culture had [creative culture] been as professionalized”: Lawrence Lessig, “Laws That Choke Creativity,” TED, March 2007. “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal”: T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays 1917–1932 (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932), 182.

pages: 271 words: 62,538

The Best Interface Is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology (Voices That Matter)
by Golden Krishna
Published 10 Feb 2015

Facebook, Last accessed September 2014. https://www.facebook.com/pages/I-hate-battery-low/147670411993839 28 Hilary Lewis, “Here’s a Hard-Charging App,” New York Post, October 21, 2012. http://nypost.com/2012/10/21/heres-a-hard-charging-app/ 29 Caitlin McGarry, “iPhone 6 Pocket Problems: Some Buyers Report That Sitting Down Bends Phones,” Macworld, September 23, 2014. http://www.macworld.com/article/2687107/iphone-6-pocket-problems-some-buyers-report-that-sitting-down-bends-phones.html 30 “Over 200+ grown-up campers will go off-the-grid and take over Camp Navarro (a historic and nostalgic scouts camp) in the redwoods to celebrate what it means to be alive. Trade in your computer, cell phone, Instagrams, clocks, hashtags, business cards, schedules, and work-jargon for an off-the-grid weekend of pure unadulterated fun. Together we create a community where money is worth little . . . and individuality, self expression, friendship, freedom, and memories are valued most.”

ECOVILLAGE: 1001 ways to heal the planet
by Ecovillage 1001 Ways to Heal the Planet-Triarchy Press Ltd (2015)
Published 30 Jun 2015

We gather knowledge from experts across the globe and integrate their insights into a holistic model of a peace culture. Our water retention landscape and permaculture practices offer solutions for landscape healing and sustainable food production in regions that are threatened by desertification. The Test Field of the Solar Village is off the grid, with a Scheffler mirror, biogas plant and solar collectors for everyday living. The Escola de Esperanza — School of Hope — is an international school, in the process of legalisation, and will also be available for local children. A stone circle and pilgrimage paths form a landscape shrine to communicate with the earth.

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This is what The Source does. The land holds them and the spirit of the land nurtures them. People who come to this demonstration village learn so much and are amazed that we, as a network of extended family and friends, can work and live together. We have created community kitchens, a nature school, off-the-grid living, an organic farm, the natural dye collective with local community women, a Farmers Market in Kingston, the Taino Camp, a Summer Literacy and Art Program, a Sunday Dinner Project, the Jamaica Sustainable Farm Enterprise Program (that just got funded by USAID) and many community development projects within St.

pages: 202 words: 64,725

Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Published 12 Sep 2016

That twelve-year-old astronaut you once were is still there. Be curious about what else you might discover. Try making at least one of these plans at least a little bit wild. Even if it’s something you would never do in your right mind, write down your most far-fetched and crazy idea. Maybe it’s giving up all your worldly possessions and living off the grid in Alaska or India. Maybe it’s taking acting classes and trying to make it in Hollywood. Perhaps it’s becoming an expert skateboarder or devoting your life to adrenaline-producing extreme sports. Or maybe it’s hunting down that long-lost great-uncle and filling in the gaps of your family story.

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All we’re saying is that you recognize how important these people are and figure out an effective and appropriate role for them. Do try to avoid the mistake of leaving them completely out of it until the end. That seldom works out well, for a lot of reasons you can probably imagine. Surprising your wife with the fact that you’re prototyping living off the grid for the next year is not going to land well. The Team. These are the people with whom you’re sharing the specifics of your life design project and who will track with you on that project over time at regular intervals. The most likely candidates for your team are among the people you invited to your feedback session to present and discuss your three alternative five-year Odyssey Plans.

pages: 274 words: 63,679

Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America
by Angie Schmitt
Published 26 Aug 2020

Richard Retting, “Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State: 2017 Preliminary Data,” Governors Highway Safety Association, February 28, 2018, https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/pedestrians_18.pdf. 41. Atherton, telephone interview. 42. Geoff Boeing, “Off the Grid . . . and Back Again? The Recent Evolution of American Street Network Planning and Design,” paper presented at the ninety-ninth annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC, January 12–16, 2020. 43. Boeing, “Off the Grid.” 44. Governors Highway Safety Association, “Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State: 2018 Preliminary Data,” February 2019, https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2019-02/FINAL_Pedestrians19.pdf. 45.

pages: 268 words: 64,786

Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away
by Julien Saunders and Kiersten Saunders
Published 13 Jun 2022

Reading their blogs and listening to their podcasts was like watching financial X Games: it was different, shocking, and predominantly white. At first, we chalked it up to something “those” West Coast yuppies did and couldn’t envision ourselves or anyone who looked like us choosing this way of life. We thought, if you had a good job, why would you be in such a rush to leave it? And why would you go to such great lengths as living off the grid, not owning a car, or never going out to eat to do it so quickly? We thought we simply didn’t have to go to such lengths to achieve similar goals. But as we dug deeper, our perspective changed. Like veganism, we didn’t simply dismiss the merits of the lifestyle because it seemed unfamiliar, unnecessary, or extreme.

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It’s a key contributor to why the average personal saving rate is so low in the United States, why revolving credit card balances are so high, and why so many people aren’t able to cover the cost of emergencies without going into more debt. We wish we could offer you a mantra, patch, or trial period in a treatment center to curb your desires, but unfortunately those don’t exist. And sure, you could live off the grid, avoid technology altogether, and use cash to minimize the flood of marketing messages pointed in your direction, but we’re not confident that would solve the problem either. Over the years, we’ve learned that your greatest defense to avoid being trapped in a cycle of consumerism is to have a solid foundation of values, a community you can lean on for support, and rock-solid beliefs that guide your thinking about money.

pages: 322 words: 77,341

I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
by John Lanchester
Published 14 Dec 2009

So they either wind up moving in with other people that they know, a relative or friend, or if they’re lucky they can rent a place on their own, either through a private landlord or a company that doesn’t require a credit check. If they’re very very unlucky, they wind up on the street.” I said, it’s pretty bleak that people just disappear off the grid like that. “Yes,” he said. “The short answer is, nobody knows where they go. There is no safety net for these people. The social system is so strained at this time that it’s very difficult to find appropriate housing in the same amount of time that you’re being put out of your other house. I had a gentleman this morning, he’s being put out of his home because he can’t make his mortgage payments.

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According to Richard Bitner, an expert in the field as the owner of a subprime brokerage and author of a candid and very useful book about the industry, Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider’s Tale of Greed, Fraud, and Ignorance, subprime borrowers fall into four main categories.4 They have a history of being slow to pay; they are under-qualified, because they don’t have much credit history (as in the hypothetical Warren Buffett example above); they have had a bad thing happen to them, such as illness or bereavement, which caused them to go off the grid for a time; they’re plain unlucky and missed a series of utility payments because they were away and their house sitter forgot to open the envelopes; or they’re plain unlucky in another way, because they are on the margin between conforming and subprime and chose a mortgage broker who, because subprime loans pay more commission, deliberately arranged their application on the wrong side of the subprime line.

pages: 273 words: 76,786

Explore Everything
by Bradley Garrett
Published 7 Oct 2013

It was also, ironically, probably a safer route than crossing the bridge over the Seine by foot at times. Exploration of derelict places in the city that led to sewers and cable runs in London and Paris, and the political implication of not only what space is ‘open’ to access but also the significance and affordances of ‘offlimits’ and ‘off the grid’ space on the whole, drove us to begin unravelling everything around us. Our gaze had been so indelibly altered that we could no longer see the city in the form presented; the spectacle was being recoded. The crew followed architect Alan Rapp in his assertion that ‘today’s infrastructure sustains the paranoid and waning civilization that will be tomorrow’s ruin.’35 Guy Debord wrote that the new existence he sought, full of adventure, mystery and mysticism, would be built on the ruins of the modern spectacle.36 Many of the subterranean places we accessed had clearly been empty for decades.

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The next day, in a different drain, a homeless guy told us, ‘Only dumb motherfuckers set off that alarm under Caesar’s.’ Touché. It became obvious through our encounters with various people that many were in the drains by choice. They had chosen to stop contributing to the system, chosen to gamble their lives away, chosen meth or heroin over family and stability, and chosen the freedom and danger of living off the grid, scamming tourists and casinos by silver-mining (hunting machines for leftover credits) rather than working a minimum-wage job. They chose to get high in drains until the scorching desert days cooled off, and then crawled out, delighted to run around this desiccated plasticland for another night.

pages: 941 words: 237,152

USA's Best Trips
by Sara Benson
Published 23 May 2010

* * * TIME 2 days DISTANCE 50 miles BEST TIME TO GO May – Oct START Kidron, OH END Millersburg, OH * * * Start in Kidron, where Lehman’s sells non-electric products to locals in a 32,000-sq-ft barn. Stroll through to ogle wind-up flashlights, wood-burning stoves and hand-cranked meat grinders. If those are too off-the-grid, try the ecofriendly wooden toys or organic gardening books. Once you find your way out, head to the strip mall next door. The Hearthside Quilt Shoppe stocks locally made quilts, as well as fabric, patterns and notions for do-it-yourself types. Uninitiated in the patchwork ways? Take a class or join the chitchat during the monthly Tuesday-night Quilt Guild.

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Another option is driving the 12 miles east into Terlingua ghost town for dinner. Unlike at Shafter, many of the ruined clay-brick shanties here have been reinhabited. Before the mercury mines dried up in the 1940s, 2000 people lived here. Today hippies and hardcore desert dwellers form an interesting, off-the-grid community. The Starlight Theatre now plays host to both locals and tourists at dinner. Dishes like chicken fried antelope and pork with chipotle sauce star, and Thursday through Sunday there’s live music. Happy hour at the bar has a following, but those in the know usually just pick up a beer at the Terlingua Trading Company next door and hang out on the benches lining the long front porch to watch the sun go down.

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If you’re not up for skiing or boarding, spend the afternoon riding the lift up and sliding down the mountain’s tubing hill on an inflated rubber donut. Sun Valley’s top nightspot, Whiskey Jacques, is the place to unwind with smooth cocktails, live music and dancing come dark. Purported to have been one of Ernest Hemingway’s favorite watering holes, it’s a rustic, Old-West-saloon-style spot. * * * Want to really get off the grid? Go skiing on the moon – well, not the literal moon, but Idaho’s version. An hour’s drive southeast of Ketchum, Craters of the Moon National Monument is an 83-sq-mile volcanic showcase. Lava flows and tubes and cinder cones are found along the 7-mile Crater Loop Rd (closed to cars in winter, when skiers and snowshoers take control).

Fodor's Costa Rica 2013
by Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.
Published 1 Oct 2012

The Southern Zone has some of the country’s most impressive, though least accessible, national parks—towering Chirripó and mountain-studded La Amistad; and Corcovado, where peccaries, tapirs, and, more rarely, jaguars still roam. Stunning marine wonders can be found in the Golfo Dulce, the dive and snorkeling spots around Caño Island Biological Reserve, and Ballena Marine National Park, famous for seasonal whale migrations. The lodges around Drake Bay, together with the off-the-grid lodges of Carate and Cabo Matapalo, provide unequaled immersion in tropical nature. GOOD PRACTICES The signage you’ll often see in natural areas sums up ecotourism’s principal tenets: Leave nothing but footprints; take away nothing but memories. A few more tips: Walk softly on forest trails and keep as quiet as you can.

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Cons: older cabins are not fancy and have small, basic bathrooms. TripAdvisor: “wonderful staff,” “rustic but beautiful surroundings,” “fabulous for wildlife.” | Rooms from: $65 | 3 km/2 miles north of bridge into Dominical | 11909 | 2787–0003 | www.haciendabaru.com | 6 cabinas, 6 guest rooms | Breakfast. * * * Living Off the Grid Many hotels in the more remote areas of the South Pacific generate their own electricity, so don’t count on air-conditioning, using a hair dryer, calling home, checking your email, or paying with a credit card (unless it’s arranged in advance). Some lodges do have radio contact with the outside world and satellite phone systems you can use in emergencies, but bad weather can often block the satellite signal.

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You might not guess it from the rickety bicycles and ancient pickup trucks parked on the main street, but Puerto Jiménez is the largest town on the Osa Peninsula. This one-iguana town has a certain frontier charm, though. New restaurants, hotels, and “green” newcomers lend an interesting, funky edge. It’s also the last civilized outpost on the peninsula. Heading south, you fall off the grid. That means no public electricity or telephones. So make your phone calls, send your email, get cash, and stock up on supplies here. Be prepared for the humidity and mosquitoes—Puerto Jiménez has plenty of both. If you need a refreshing dip, head southeast of the airport to Playa Platanares, where there is a long stretch of beach with swimmable, warm water.

Western USA
by Lonely Planet

Baker Beach BEACH ( sunrise-sunset) Unswimmable waters (except when the tide’s coming in) but unbeatable views of the Golden Gate make this former Army beachhead SF’s tanning location of choice, especially the clothing-optional north end – at least until the afternoon fog rolls in. Fort Mason HISTORIC SITE ( 415-345-7500; www.fortmason.org) Army sergeants would be scandalized by the frolicking at this former military outpost, including comedy improv workshops, kiddie art classes, and Off the Grid (http://offthegridsf.com), where gourmet trucks circle like pioneer wagons. Fort Point HISTORIC SITE ( 415-561-4395; www.nps.gov/fopo) Despite its impressive guns, this Civil War fort saw no action – at least until Alfred Hitchcock shot scenes from Vertigo here, with stunning views of the Golden Gate Bridge from below.

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Eating Hope you’re hungry – there are 10 times more restaurants per capita in San Francisco than in any other US city. Graze your way across SF, with stops at the Ferry Building farmers market, Omnivore (Click here) for signed cookbooks, knife-skills workshops at nonprofit 18 Reasons (Click here) and gourmet food trucks at Off the Grid (Click here). Most of SF’s top restaurants are quite small, so reserve now. SOMA, UNION SQUARE & CIVIC CENTER Benu CALIFORNIAN FUSION $$$ ( 415-685-4860; www.benusf.com; 22 Hawthorne St; mains $25-40; 5:30-10pm Tue-Sat) SF has refined fusion cuisine over 150 years, but no one rocks it quite like chef Corey Lee, who remixes local fine-dining staples and Pacific Rim flavors with a SoMa DJ’s finesse.

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In-N-Out Burger BURGERS $ ( 800-786-1000; www.in-n-out.com; 333 Jefferson St; meals under $10; 10:30am-1am Sun-Thu, to 1:30am Fri & Sat; ) Serving burgers for 60 years the way California likes them: with prime chuck ground on-site, fries and shakes made with pronounceable ingredients, served by employees paid a living wage. Ask for yours ‘wild style,’ cooked in mustard with grilled onions. THE MARINA Off the Grid FOOD TRUCKS $ (http://offthegridsf.com; Fort Mason parking lot; dishes under $10; 5-10pm Fri) Some 30 food trucks circle their wagons at SF’s largest mobile-gourmet hootenanny (other nights/locations attract less than a dozen trucks; see website). Arrive before 6:30pm or expect 20-minute waits for Chairman Bao’s clamshell buns stuffed with duck and mango, Roli Roti’s free-range herbed roast chicken, and dessert from the Crème Brûlée Man.

pages: 286 words: 82,065

Curation Nation
by Rosenbaum, Steven
Published 27 Jan 2011

Über-blogger Robert Scoble describes the flood of data that overwhelms him most waking hours: “I have TweetDeck running with the real-time streams and can see it flowing down the screen—and I’m only following 20,000 people out of two hundred million people on Twitter, so I’m just seeing a little water in the gutter compared to the Mississippi River that could be going through my screen. And we’re all trying to deal with this, we’re all trying to find interesting stuff and share it with our friends. People need ways to deal with this constant stream of information.” The solution isn’t to bail out, to get “off the grid,” as some weary netizens proclaim. Fred Wilson, a New York venture capitalist and one of the folks who’s got his pulse on the Web start-up community, routinely declares “e-mail bankruptcy” and empties his inbox. Overwhelmed with input, he waves the white flag of digital defeat and tells his potential correspondents they’ll simply need to write again.

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Think about that for a moment. That phrase a productive member of society used to mean you had a job, a car, and a family. But now, being a member of society means participating in the conversation, the commerce, and the curation of the data stream. That’s really significant—and exciting. Passive participants will be off the grid; their digital vote won’t count. And they won’t be helping to influence the tides and turns of our increasingly digital world. Then, as you walk down the block in Curation Nation, you’ll pass by an almost limitless number of digital shopkeepers. These shops will be the new front door through which you’ll enter a topic, a genre, a hobby, or any of an almost endless number of content niches and product categories.

Critical Failures III (Caverns and Creatures Book 3)
by Bevan, Robert
Published 12 Aug 2014

Don’t you think we’re in deep enough shit as it is?” “This dude just tried to fuck me against my will,” said Tim. “Yeah, I know, but –” “And do I have to remind you that he thought I was a kid?” “I’m only thinking about –” “You’re not thinking,” said Tim. “You and Chaz are missing the bigger picture here. We’re off the grid. If the cops get us on camera, get our fingerprints or whatever, who gives a fuck? We’re in deep shit all right. But here’s the good part. We’re in so deep that we get to act with a sort of impunity. We can’t live here like this. There are only two ways this can end. We get Mordred to change us back into our normal selves, in which case we’ll never be suspected of the crimes committed by the carnival freaks we currently are.

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He reclined his seat all the way back, but still had to crawl almost entirely onto the back seat in order to reach the tablet because of his short arms. Tablet in hand, he crawled back up front and pulled the lever to raise the seat back upright. “Make sure you log me out,” said Stacy. “I need to stay off the grid until I figure out what I’m going to tell my boss.” “I think your best bet is to just say you were sick or something, and never made it to work,” said Tim, logging into Facebook with his own account. “I don’t think there’s anything you can say that will adequately explain what he’s going to walk in on.”

pages: 291 words: 81,703

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
by Tyler Cowen
Published 11 Sep 2013

It is easy to rent an acceptable apartment in a non-peripheral part of Berlin, not too far from a subway or streetcar stop, for a few hundred dollars a month. Food, too, is much cheaper than in the rest of Western Europe—cheaper than in most of the rest of Germany even. There are many thousands of people in Berlin simply living, on low rent, to “get by.” It’s the ultimate slacker city. The most extreme low-rent move is to go “off the grid.” For all the technological progress we have seen, a growing number of Americans are disconnecting from traditional water and electricity hookups and making their own way, often in owner-built homes, micro-homes, trailer parks, floating boats, or less elegantly in tent cities, as we find scattered around the United States, including in Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles.

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See also artificial intelligence (AI) Mechanical Turk, 148–49 mechanization, 126–27 media, 146 median incomes, 38, 52, 60, 253 Medicaid, 234–39, 250 medical diagnosis, 87–89, 128–29 Medicare, 232–35, 237–38, 242 Medication Adherence Scores, 124 Mediterranean Europe, 174–75 memory, 151–55 meritocracy, 189–90, 230–31 meta-rationality, 82, 115 meta-studies, 224–25 Mexico, 168, 171, 177, 242–43 microcredit, 222–23 microeconomics, 212, 225 “micro-intelligibility,” 219 mid-wage occupations, 38 military, 29, 57 Millennium Prize Problems, 207–8 minimum wage, 59, 60 modes of employment, 35–36 monetarist theory, 226 MOOCs (massive open online courses), 180 Moonwalking with Einstein (Foer), 152 Moore’s law, 10, 15–16 moral issues, 26, 130–31 morale in the workplace, 30, 36 Mormon Church, 197 Morphy, Paul, 106 motivation, 197–202, 203 movie ratings, 121 Moxon’s Master, 134 Mueller, Andreas, 59 multinational corporations, 164 Murray, Charles, 231, 249 music, 146–47, 158 Myspace, 42, 209 mysticism, 153 Nakamura, Hikaru, 80 Narrative Science, 8–9 natural gas production, 177 natural language, 7, 119, 140–41 Naum (chess program), 72 negotiations in business, 12–13, 73 Netflix, 9 Nevada, 8 The New York Times, 11–12 Newton, Isaac, 153 Ng, Jennifer Hwee Kwoon, 89 Nickel, Arno, 81 Nielsen, Dagh, 80 Nobel Prizes, 187, 216 non-tradeable sectors, 176 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 8 Northeast US, 241 “nudge” concept, 105 Obama healthcare reform, 237–38 Occupy Wall Street, 230, 251, 253, 256 O’Daniel, Karrah, 96 offshoring, 175. See also outsourcing “off-the-grid” living, 246–47 online dating, 9, 16, 95–98, 125, 144–45 online education, 179–85 opportunity cost, 184 options-pricing theory, 203 outsourcing, 162, 163–71 overseas labor markets, 59 “P vs. NP” problem, 101 particle physics, 211–15 patent law, 17 per capita income, 170 Perelman, Grigory, 208 performance evaluation, 104 Peri, Giovanni, 162–63 “the periphery,” 175 personal service sector, 31–32 petty entrepreneurship, 61 Pew Research Center, 248–49 pharmaceutical industry, 17 Ph.D. degrees, 40 physics, 211–15, 226 Player Piano (Vonnegut), 126, 247–48 Pocket Fritz (chess program), 147–48 Poincaré conjecture, 208 poker, 49 Polanyi, Michael, 215 Polgar, Judit, 108 politics, 10–11, 227, 251–59 poor population, 121, 236, 237 popular culture, 51 population growth, 51.

pages: 287 words: 80,050

The Wisdom of Frugality: Why Less Is More - More or Less
by Emrys Westacott
Published 14 Apr 2016

In a country like the United States, even people of relatively modest means are likely to have much more: car, TV, radio, music system, phone, camera, washer, microwave, running hot water, flush toilet, books, games, toys, pictures, ornaments, pets, kitchen gadgets, jewelry, best clothes, best crockery, sports equipment, plus any amount of unspecified junk that mysteriously accumulates in the garage and which one hopes will eventually go to a better home following the yard sale. There are, of course, people who are so poor that they have little or none of this sort of stuff. And there are communities like the Amish, as well as individuals who opt to live “off the grid” or who accept blogger Dave Bruno’s “100 thing challenge”29 and deliberately choose to do without the conveniences and accoutrements that others take for granted. But it remains an obvious truth that most of us living in the modern world do not think we would be happy with nothing beyond Epicurus’s “bare necessities.”

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The most important artists and writers of today participate in some sort of dialogue with their contemporaries, and their work speaks to contemporary issues. Few people would think it particularly admirable for a person to read books while refusing to watch films, or to listen to classical music while remaining ignorant of more recently evolved musical genres. But analogous arguments can be made with respect to lifestyle. To live “off the grid,” metaphorically speaking, may limit our understanding of and ability to participate in the world we happen to have been thrust into. On the other hand, champions of simple living can respond to this criticism with the well-taken point that it is no bad thing to be alienated from the worst aspects of contemporary culture—materialism, consumerism, individualism, technology fetishism, shallow hedonism, or the cult of celebrities.

pages: 547 words: 148,732

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
by Michael Pollan
Published 30 Apr 2018

There is nothing shaggy or uncareful about him. Taut, press shy, and disposed to choose his words with a pair of tweezers, Jesse, now in his fifties, prefers to do his work out of public view, and preferably from the one-room cabin where he lives by himself in the rugged hills north of San Francisco, off the grid except for a fast Internet connection. “Bob Jesse is like the puppeteer,” Katherine MacLean told me. MacLean is a psychologist who worked in Roland Griffiths’s lab from 2009 until 2013. “He’s the visionary guy working behind the scenes.” Following Jesse’s meticulous directions, I drove north from the Bay Area, eventually winding up at the end of a narrow dirt road in a county he asked me not to name.

…

I was disappointed my cardiologist had taken MDMA off the table but pleased that he had more or less given me a green light on the rest of my travel plans. Trip One: LSD At least on paper, nothing about the first guide I chose to work with sounds auspicious. The man lived and worked so far off the grid, in the mountains of the American West, that he had no phone service, generated his own electricity, pumped his own water, grew his own food, and had only the spottiest satellite Internet. I could just forget about the whole idea of being anywhere in range of a hospital emergency room. Then there was the fact that while I was a Jew from a family that had once been reluctant to buy a German car, this fellow was the son of a Nazi—a German in his midsixties whose father had served in the SS during World War II.

…

Fritz had gone up to the house to prepare our dinner, leaving me to make some notes about the experience on my laptop, when all at once I felt my heart surge and then begin to dance madly in my chest. I immediately recognized the sensation of turbulence as AFib, and when I took my pulse, it was chaotic. A panicky bird was trapped in my rib cage, throwing itself against the bars in an attempt to get out. And here I was, a dozen miles off the grid smack in the middle of nowhere. It went on like that for two hours, straight through a subdued and anxious dinner. Fritz seemed concerned; in all the hundreds of breathwork sessions he had led or witnessed, he had never seen such a reaction. (He had mentioned earlier a single fatality attributed to holotropic breathwork: a man who had had an aneurism.)

pages: 356 words: 91,157

The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class?and What We Can Do About It
by Richard Florida
Published 9 May 2016

On the delivery of local services to the suburbs, see Arthur Nelson as cited in Leigh Gallagher, The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving (New York: Portfolio Penguin, 2013). For the UCLA study, by the California Center for Sustainable Communities, see Laura Bliss, “L.A.’s New ‘Energy Atlas’ Maps: Who Sucks the Most Off the Grid,” CityLab, October 6, 2015, www.citylab.com/housing/2015/10/las-new-energy-atlas-maps-who-sucks-the-most-off-the-grid/409135. Of course, nearly 20 percent of Bell’s population lives below the poverty line, which means that its residents use less air conditioning, fewer computers, and so on. On the overall cost of sprawl to the US economy, see Todd Litman, “Analysis of Public Policies That Unintentionally Encourage and Subsidize Urban Sprawl,” London School of Economics and Political Science, for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate for the New Climate Economy, 2015, http://static.newclimateeconomy.report/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/public-policies-encourage-sprawl-nce-report.pdf. 15.

pages: 330 words: 91,805

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism
by Robin Chase
Published 14 May 2015

One sunny day in June 2014, 5,000 London taxi drivers (says Transport for London, the regulator, while the organizers claim 12,000) halted traffic in Trafalgar Square for hours to protest the unregulated Uber service.10 Taxi drivers in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Rio de Janeiro mounted similar though smaller slowdowns, parking their vehicles in major intersections and immobilizing central business districts. The fight was between those who were abiding by the rules (the London cabbies) against those who had decided the rules no longer made sense and had gone off the grid (to drive unregulated for Uber). The congestion and media reporting were a boon to Uber. They reported nine times the number of app downloads between midnight and noon on the Wednesday of the London strike, compared to the same time period the week earlier. As they say, any press is good press.

…

As Dan pointed out to me, “Regulators think that by exerting more control, they will increase compliance. At some point, the opposite is true, a point you may see as counterintuitive. The heavy-handed rule maker is fighting the participants.” At a certain point many will choose to break the rules and go off the grid—like the subset of Uber drivers who were formerly part of the regulated industry. Dan continues, “At this point, the benefits of all the rules are lost, and best practices can’t spread, as they are hidden from central authority (or a platform). This is known as ‘shadow IT’ in the tech world, and as ‘black markets’ in economic terms.

Fodor's Big Island of Hawaii
by Fodor’s Travel Guides
Published 1 Aug 2022

One of the park’s best hikes, the Kilauea Iki Trail is a 4-mile loop that takes you down the crater walls and across an otherworldly landscape of a solidified lava lake dotted with steaming vents and alien-looking fumaroles. You climb up the crater wall along a zigzagging trail, ending back at the crater overlook. GO HORSEBACK RIDING IN WAIPIO VALLEY The Valley of the Kings on the Hamakua Coast owes its relative isolation and off-the-grid status to the 2,000-foot-high cliffs bookending the valley. Really, the only way to explore this sacred place is on two legs—or four. We’re partial to the sanctioned horseback rides that wend deep into the rain forest to a series of waterfalls and pools—the setting for a perfect romantic photo op.

…

Waterfalls drop thousands of feet from the North Kohala watershed to the Waipio Valley floor. The lush valley is breathtaking in every way and from every vantage, with tropical foliage, abundant flowers, wild horses, misty pastures, curving rivers, stands of ironwood trees and a wide, gray, boulder-strewn shore. Though almost completely off the grid today, Waipio (the word means “curved water”) was once a center of Hawaiian life. Somewhere between 4,000 and 20,000 people made it their home between the 13th and 17th centuries. In addition, this highly historic and culturally significant area housed heiau (temples) and puuhonua (places of refuge) in addition to royal residences.

pages: 98 words: 25,753

Ethics of Big Data: Balancing Risk and Innovation
by Kord Davis and Doug Patterson
Published 30 Dec 2011

Society, government, and the legal system have not yet adapted to the coming age of big-data impacts such as transparency, correlation, and aggregation. New legislation is being drafted, debated, and ratified by governments all over the world at a rapid pace. Only a generation or two ago, one could fairly easily drop “off the grid” and disappear within the continental United States. Today, it would be nearly impossible for a person to do much of anything without generating a data trail that a reasonably knowledgeable and modestly equipped investigator could follow to its end (http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/).

Fodor's Costa Rica 2012
by Fodor's
Published 6 Oct 2011

The Southern Zone has some of the country’s most impressive, though least accessible, national parks—towering Chirripó and mountain-studded La Amistad; and Corcovado, where peccaries, tapirs, and, more rarely, jaguars still roam. Stunning marine wonders can be found in the Golfo Dulce, the dive and snorkeling spots around Caño Island Biological Reserve, and Ballena Marine National Park, famous for seasonal whale migrations. The lodges around Drake Bay, together with the off-the-grid lodges of Carate and Cabo Matapalo, provide unequaled immersion in tropical nature. Good Practices The signage you’ll often see in natural areas sums up ecotourism’s principal tenets: Leave nothing but footprints; take away nothing but memories. A few more tips: Walk softly on forest trails and keep as quiet as you can.

…

You might not guess it from the rickety bicycles and ancient pickup trucks parked on the main street, but Puerto Jiménez is the largest town on the Osa Peninsula. This one-iguana town has a certain frontier charm, though. New restaurants, hotels, and “green” newcomers lend an interesting, funky edge. It’s also the last civilized outpost on the peninsula. Heading south, you fall off the grid. That means no public electricity or telephones. So make your phone calls, send your emails, get cash, and stock up on supplies here. Be prepared for the humidity and mosquitoes—Puerto Jiménez has plenty of both. If you need a refreshing dip, head southeast of the airport to Playa Platanares, where there is a long stretch of beach with swimmable, warm water.

…

Outdoor Activities Isabel Esquivel at Osa Tropical (Main road across from Banco Nacional | 60702 | 2735–5062) runs the best general tour operation on the peninsula. Whatever travel question you ask the locals, they will usually say, “Ask Isabel.” Along with arranging flights, ground transport, hotel bookings, tours, and car rentals, Osa Tropical is the radio communications center for many of the off-the-grid Osa lodges and tour operators. Bird-Watching The birding around the Osa Peninsula is world renowned, with more than 400 species. Endemic species include Baird’s trogon, yellow-billed cotinga, whistling wren, black-cheeked ant tanager, and the glorious turquoise cotinga. There have even been sightings of the very rare harpy eagle in the last couple of years.

pages: 522 words: 162,310

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
by Kurt Andersen
Published 4 Sep 2017

* * * *1 The same minister the same year also published Day of Doom, America’s first bestseller, an extremely long and cheerfully terrifying poem about Judgment Day: “However fair, however square, your way and work hath been…Earth’s dwellers all…suffer must, for it is just, Eternal misery.” *2 Apart from the subdivisions actually called Walden Pond, the others are the product of the Suburban Development Name Generator, an entertaining app. 16 Fantasy Industrialized IN HIS BOOK ABOUT THE living-off-the-grid stunt, which he wrote after moving back to town, Thoreau declared that he was choosing “not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century.” From his high ground, he looked down on all the American clamor and vulgarity. “What are men celebrating?” He had a point. At that Walden moment, modern media and advertising and show business, all interdependent, were busy being born in America.

…

In left-bohemian milieux, parents decided that their children are not in this world to live up to expectations; that they must only and always do their own thing; and that tests and grades would turn them into drones of the corporate state. And in the 1970s the courts and state legislatures started deciding okay, whatever, do your own thing, Christian, hippie, it’s all good, school’s optional. Retreating to self-sufficient rural isolation, living off the grid, became a hippie thing in the 1960s before it took off as a right-wing conceit in the 1970s. The back-to-the-land movement, with the Whole Earth Catalog as its official almanac and souvenir program, floated along on dreams of agrarian utopia. (For a year or two around 1970, I was a teenage Walter Mitty with my own Whole Earth dream.)

…

*5 2012 National Household Education Surveys Program. 36 Anything Goes—Unless It Picks My Pocket or Breaks My Leg AFTER EMERGING IN THE 1970S as the haunted, well-armed cousins of Whole Earth Catalog readers, survivalists steadily multiplied. They’re betting on a complete breakdown of the U.S. economy and government that they can and will survive by living as they imagine Americans lived centuries ago, in rural isolation and off the grid. Theirs is a dystopia-ready lifestyle, a fantasy given vivid form and encouraged by the three Mad Max movies that came out between 1979 and 1985. A great selling point was the Y2K panic, the fear in the 1990s that our new digital systems would all go haywire as 1999 turned to 2000, and the newly digital-dependent world would collapse.

Fantasyland
by Kurt Andersen
Published 5 Sep 2017

…

pages: 153 words: 27,424

REST API Design Rulebook
by Mark Masse
Published 19 Oct 2011

Stuart Rackham Thanks also to Stuart Rackham for AsciiDoc.[5] It is an awesome tool that made formatting this book a breeze. Personal My brother Mike Massé is a Web-based rock star. His music provided the soundtrack for all my writing sessions. Mike’s talents and passions have been a lifelong inspiration to me. Thanks to my family (daughter, mom, dad, and sisters) for their patience and support while I was off the grid working on this book. Finally, I thank Shawna Stine, for being the book’s first reviewer and biggest fan. * * * [2] Fielding, Roy Thomas. Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures, Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Irvine, 2000 (http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm)

pages: 410 words: 101,260

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
by Adam Grant
Published 2 Feb 2016

That engine powers the Slingshot water purifier, which can distill drinking water from any source, needs no filter, and can run on cow dung as a source of fuel. Kamen came full circle when he pitched the Slingshot to Komisar. Once again, though, Komisar is skeptical. Having traipsed around the developing world with a backpack himself, he thinks the machinery is too complicated for off-the-grid installations; when it stops working, it will wind up in a garbage heap. Whether this is an accurate forecast or a false negative remains to be seen. As an inventor, Kamen’s best bet is to blindly generate novel ideas and gather more feedback from fellow creators to hone his vision about which ones might prove useful.

…

As an inventor: Adam Higginbotham, “Dean Kamen’s Mission to Bring Unlimited Clean Water to the Developing World,” Wired, August 13, 2013, www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/08/features/engine-of-progress; Christopher Helman, “Segway Inventor Dean Kamen Thinks His New Stirling Engine Will Get You off the Grid for Under $10K,” Forbes, July 2, 2014, www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/07/02/dean-kamen-thinks-his-new-stirling-engine-could-power-the-world; Erico Guizzo, “Dean Kamen’s ‘Luke Arm’ Prosthesis Receives FDA Approval,” IEEE Spectrum, May 13, 2014, http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/biomedical/bionics/dean-kamen-luke-arm-prosthesis-receives-fda-approval. 3: Out on a Limb Out on a Limb: Susan J.

pages: 323 words: 95,939

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 21 Mar 2013

Our boss isn’t the guy in the corner office, but a PDA in our pocket. Our taskmaster is depersonalized and internalized—and even more rigorous than the union busters of yesterday. There is no safe time. If we are truly to take time away from the program, we feel we must disconnect altogether and live “off the grid,” as if we were members of a different, predigital era. Time in the digital era is no longer linear but disembodied and associative. The past is not something behind us on the timeline but dispersed through the sea of information. Like a digital unconscious, the raw data sits forgotten unless accessed by a program in the future.

…

They’re just too complex and would involve levels of agreement, cooperation, and coordination that seem beyond the capacity of humans at this stage in our cultural evolution, anyway. So in lieu of doing the actual hard work of fixing these problems in the present, we fantasize instead about life afterward. The crisis of global warming morphs into the fantasy of living off the grid. The threat of a terrorist attack on our office tower leads us to purchase an emergency personal parachute for easy egress, and to wonder how far up the org chart we might be promoted once everyone else is gone. The collapse of civilization due to nuclear accident, peak oil, or SARS epidemic finally ends the ever-present barrage of media, tax forms, toxic spills, and mortgage payments, opening the way to a simpler life of farming, maintaining shelter, and maybe defending one’s family.

pages: 376 words: 101,759

Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid
by Meredith. Angwin
Published 18 Oct 2020

When you read a “Beat the Peak” article, the first part of the article is usually about preventing the use of fossil fuels. For example, in Green Mountain Power’s August press release, the first part is about saving money and carbon with battery storage. Next, Green Mountain Power writes “the amount of stored energy deployed to beat the new peak last week was like taking up to 6,000 homes off the grid, and it offset about 21,120 pounds of carbon, the equivalent of not burning 1,078 gallons of gasoline.” In fairness to Green Mountain Power, near the bottom of the press release, they do describe the event in a more complete manner. “ISO-NE uses the yearly peak hour to calculate costs utilities pay toward the regional grid, so when utilities are able to lower demand during that key hour, they can create savings for customers.”

…

Let’s look at fossil fuels, biomass, and other combustion sources of power. In terms of power plants on the grid, nobody wants unabated, high-particulate-release coal burning, or the release of large quantities of nitrogen oxides from unabated gas-fired plants. On the other hand, constant increases in pollution-control requirements will drive some types of plants off the grid as “uneconomical.” That is often the purpose of those requirements. That is, increased requirements for one technology are often supported by the lobbyists of rival technologies. In terms of nuclear energy, the constant increase in safety requirements for nuclear have the same effect as constant increases in pollution-control requirements for fossil plants.

pages: 201 words: 33,620

Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2020
by Lonely Planet
Published 21 Oct 2019

www.wildsweden.com/kolarbyn-ecolodge Otentic, Mauritius The nation’s only glamping outfit eschews plastic and grows its own produce at its two idyllic locations. https://otentic.mu Bardia Ecolodge, Nepal Bed down at this affordable lodge made from local materials after a day tracking tigers in a remote national park. www.bardiaecolodge.com Jao Lodge, Botswana Be among the first to experience this newly revamped safari lodge from the sustainable- tourism-award-winning Wilderness Safaris Botswana collection. https://wilderness- safaris.com Feynan Ecolodge, Jordan Enjoy traditional Bedouin hospitality at this stunning off-the-grid eco-hotel pioneer in the rugged Dana Biosphere. https://ecohotels.me/feynan Nihi Sumba, Indonesia Running entirely on house-made biofuel, this luxe beachfront resort empowers locals to protect the environment. https://nihi.com 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, USA This conscious New York City option has egg timers in the showers, boxes for donating unwanted clothes and a monthly ‘dark sky’ night when candles replace lights. www.1hotels.com Mashpi Lodge, Ecuador Hang out with scientists at this beacon of sustainability in the Ecuadorian Choco. www.

pages: 147 words: 33,578

Lonely Planet Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2022
by Lonely Planet
Published 26 Oct 2021

pages: 399 words: 107,932

Don't Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM
by Sarah Berman
Published 19 Apr 2021

Pam Cafritz, Karen Unterreiner, and Raniere all signed a decree that they would never operate another illegal chain distribution scheme. From that moment on, Raniere became a nonentity when it came to business records. He told his inner circle that because powerful forces were gunning for him, he needed to protect himself by not having a driver’s license, not owning any property or businesses, and basically staying off the grid entirely. Instead he encouraged the women around him to put their names and bank accounts on the line. CHAPTER FIVE When Keith Met Nancy (and Lauren) The beginning of NXIVM was also the beginning of the end of Keith Raniere’s relationship with Toni Natalie. In the wake of the Consumers’ Buyline shutdown, Raniere and Natalie redirected their efforts to a new multi-level marketing company that sold discounted nutritional supplements.

…

Most former members didn’t know the extent of what was going on behind the scenes, but Keeffe had more dirt than anyone who’d ever left. And yet, even with Keeffe’s inside knowledge of alleged fraud, tax evasion, hacking, obstruction of justice, and other crimes, the two women probably understood that the path ahead wouldn’t be easy. Keeffe said she knew Clare Bronfman was socking away an “off the grid” fund for Raniere. “There was $2.5 million in it,” she told Bouchey. “Now I’m sure it’s ten times that.” This recorded conversation would eventually become evidence presented in court, but it wasn’t the allegations of tax evasion, fraud, or even the plot to have enemies thrown in prison in Mexico that would finally catch law enforcement’s attention.

pages: 640 words: 177,786

Against All Enemies
by Tom Clancy and Peter Telep
Published 13 Jun 2011

“Did you tell her we had the same question?” Moore asked, chuckling sardonically through his words. “Are you kidding? I can’t talk to her directly. This comes to me from your bosses.” “Oh, well, tell them I said she owes me a cup of coffee.” “Yeah, right, I’ll do that. She does offer some news. Dante Corrales is missing. Off the grid. His girlfriend with him. Vega confirmed that before she was killed. They murdered the desk clerk at Corrales’s hotel. That tells me they’re looking for Corrales.” “Maybe he screwed over the Guatemalans, and now he’s on the run from them and from his own cartel.” “That’s what I’ve been thinking.”

…

It’ll take two to three weeks to process this evidence, and then we have to hope that the judge finds Corrales credible, even though he’s clearly out for revenge—which doesn’t help our case. And during all that time, we need to hope that your buddy Gallagher doesn’t send word back that we’re trying to indict Rojas, because if he gets tipped off, he’ll disappear. I’ll bet he’s got properties all over the world that no one even knows about. He’ll drop off the grid, and it’ll take years to find him, if ever.” “We’ve got Sonia on the inside. He can’t go into hiding.” “There’s no guarantee Rojas will take her along. He’s kept his involvement in the cartel a secret from his own son. That’s made Sonia’s operation extremely difficult. She’s tried repeatedly to gather evidence, get into his computers, but she’s come up short every time.

…

The Agency still had no leads on Gallagher’s whereabouts (he’d obviously had his shoulder beacon surgically removed), although he had been identified as the man who’d hired the kid to paint the police cars. As a field agent, Gallagher had been trained to find people who didn’t want to be found and was an expert at dropping off the grid himself. Over the years, he’d studied all the different methods people used to conceal themselves—and he’d learned which ones had worked and which had not. Finding him would cost money, time, assets, and, Moore contended, a feverish obsession. Sometime later, Moore fell asleep and was awakened by the single attendant who asked that he sit up and fasten his seat belt.

pages: 266 words: 38,397

Mastering Ember.js
by Mitchel Kelonye
Published 19 Oct 2014

First, we find the position of the current, previous, and next cells, as follows: ++mag; var traversals = this.get('traversals.up'); var x = cell.get('x'); var y = cell.get('y'); var value = cell.get('value'); var nx = x + dir.x * mag; var ny = y + dir.y * mag; var px = x + dir.x * (mag - 1); var py = y + dir.y * (mag - 1); var pcell = traversals[px][py]; We then check to see whether the cell is off the grid: var nrow = traversals[nx]; // cell is x outbound if (!nrow) return ret(); var ncell = nrow[ny]; // cell is y outbound if (!ncell) return ret(); If the new cell is indeed outbound, we return the previous cell as the new position of the tile. However, if we encounter a tile, we test whether the two can be merged: // cell cannot be merged var nvalue = ncell.get('value'); if (nvalue && value && nvalue !

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It
by Kamal Ravikant
Published 7 Jan 2020

Except here, the wind is like a slash, cutting and slicing. “Return to your present,” my friends told me over dinner. “Pain is when you’re in the future in your head.” I’d been telling them what she’d said that day, about the men she wanted to date after me. Then, I switched the subject to what I might do. Go off to Mexico or somewhere, drop off the grid for a while. My friends are a long-married couple, Cheryl and Michael. They smiled. “One day at a time, honey,” she said. Cheryl Richardson, one of the wisest women I’ve ever met. “When you go to the future in your mind, just put your hand over your heart and say to yourself, ‘I return to this.

Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider
by Weimar Gay
Published 31 Dec 2001

Doesn’t conformity and anonymity dishonor the value of individuals and create a society that is neither healthy nor particularly creative? Everyday life is mostly anonymous and unremembered wherever it’s lived. We’re always looking for a human-scale solution to an American problem: reconciling the autonomy of individuals and the shared obligations of a community. American places—from urban high-rises to “off-the-grid” rural escapes—offer a range of solutions, none of them completely satisfying and each requiring something that might be called conformity. Some of these American places are more benign than others, and some of them are suburban. Those critics have called suburban life “stratified, anesthetized, and standardized.”

pages: 406 words: 113,841

The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives
by Sasha Abramsky
Published 15 Mar 2013

That because of that decision she will go from chronic poverty, living on a few hundred dollars a month in Social Security and a few hundred dollars’ worth of food stamps, to acute misery, from merely skimping on meals to actively missing them. Or what should be done with Cruzanta Mercado and her longtime boyfriend Paul Abiley, also residents, far off the grid, of the dense tropical rainforest side of Hawaii’s Big Island? It’s an extraordinarily beautiful part of the world, the lush green forest growing out of the highly fertile volcanic mud, except in the places where the lava flows have bubbled up out of the earth, creating miles-wide swaths of dead, black solidified lava fields.

…

For example: Over the past decade, we have regularly had oil price spikes that have been nothing more than a nuisance to the affluent, but have been cataclysmic to the poor—especially to retirees on fixed incomes and to the working poor in rural areas, who tend to work minimum-wage jobs and to drive long distances for those jobs, or who are more likely to heat their homes using old-fashioned oil-based heating systems. Witness, for example, the damage caused the precarious finances of John and Stephanie France, grandparents living off the grid on the edge of the rainforest on Hawaii’s Big Island, when gas prices in the state veered near $5 a gallon in the winter and early spring of 2012. John, a disabled air force veteran, and his wife lived on small Social Security checks and a couple hundred dollars a month in food stamps. “We have a generator, and I have to buy gas for the generator.

pages: 358 words: 118,810

Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia
by Adrian Shirk
Published 15 Mar 2022

The structure, made mostly of tires and cob, belongs to an eighty-year-old German woman named Zena, who’d invited my friends and me to stay the night during a week we’d spent road-tripping and camping around the lower Rocky Mountains. The earthship she lives in is wedged into a big stretch of desert populated by dozens of other earthships—off-the-grid, passive energy homes extending for three miles all the way to the edge of an old airplane hangar which has recently been converted into a brewery. Towering over all of this in the distance are the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, still snowcapped in spring. Zena’s kitchen, sunken one floor into the hot earth, is full of big, happy plants soaking up geothermal heat by the east-facing window which takes up most of the front of her house.

…

I see the faces of the two men listening on either side of me, and then Eleanor looking at me over the fire and laughing, asking if this is a utopia, and I say, yes, why not, yes, I mean yes, anything that offers something other than capital and death. Sweeney’s head is in my lap and when I look up the stars are bright blue. Sweeney has gone remarkably silent, but partly because the baby daddy, Eleanor’s son’s father, this hippie kid who grew up off the grid, has been talking nonstop all night long. Because even in utopia it is often the case that men still talk so much and say so much stupid shit, like “there is no truth” or “your truth is my truth,” on and on and on. DIVINE UPSTATE Before I moved to the Catskills, I’d known that Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement had outposts up there, but I hadn’t realized how many: between 1930 and 1942, the movement built a total of thirty-one “heavens” in Ulster and Sullivan Counties.

pages: 127 words: 51,083

The Oil Age Is Over: What to Expect as the World Runs Out of Cheap Oil, 2005-2050
by Matt Savinar
Published 2 Jan 2004

The future is not going to be pleasant. A sense of humor will make it much easier to deal with. 103. Would it be a good time to look into buying a solar-powered home, if I have the financial resource to do so? George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Al Gore sure seem to think so. Each have state-ofthe-art solar-powered, "off-the-grid" homes. Bush's has been described as an "environmentalist's dream home." Cheney's house is equipped with state-of-the-art energy-conservation devices installed by Al Gore. Think they know something we don't? 104. How am I supposed to help stop the military-industrial complex that seems to have taken over the world?

pages: 159 words: 42,401

Snowden's Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance
by Jessica Bruder and Dale Maharidge
Published 29 Mar 2020

(In all likelihood, government intelligence agencies knew about this, which could explain why the border agents had been so aggressive.) After his story was published, the detentions stopped. By one measure, Laura and I were a perfect match. We’re both workaholics; we often debated who put in longer hours. I used her as a sounding board for projects, and she did the same with me. In early August, she visited the solar-powered off-the-grid home I’d built in Northern California, overlooking the Pacific. The place is very remote, with the nearest utility lines some three miles away and the closest neighbor a half mile (as the spotted owl flies) across a canyon. We worked through the days and nights. I was finishing a book. Laura was editing The Program, a short documentary about William Binney, the NSA-veteran-turned-whistleblower.

pages: 410 words: 119,823

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life
by Adam Greenfield
Published 29 May 2017

And even then—whatever steps they may have taken to secrete the traces of their existence from the network’s gaze, however blissfully unaware they may remain of its continuing interest in them—the dweller in a remote, off-the-grid cabin can be certain that data concerning them and their activities will continue to circulate indefinitely, turning up in response to queries and being operated on in unpredictable ways. That the network may know them primarily as a lacuna, that they may with a little luck evade its influence being brought to bear on their own body, does nothing to change the fact that its ambit is total. Any gesture of refusal short of going off the grid entirely will be still less likely to result in the desired independence from the processes of intimate, persistent oversight and management now loose in the world.

pages: 525 words: 116,295

The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives
by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen
Published 22 Apr 2013

Deliberately storing personal details about rivals or enemies on devices that find their way into the hands of law enforcement will be a useful form of sabotage. No Hidden People Allowed As terrorists develop new methods, counterterrorism strategists will adapt accordingly. Imprisonment may not be enough to contain a terror network. Governments may determine, for example, that it is too risky to have citizens “off the grid,” detached from the technological ecosystem. To be sure, in the future, as now, there will be people who resist adopting and using technology, people who want nothing to do with virtual profiles, online data systems or smart phones. Yet a government might suspect that people who opt out completely have something to hide and thus are more likely to break laws, and as a counterterrorism measure, that government will build the kind of “hidden people” registry we described earlier.

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Given that today’s RFID chips can be easily fried in a microwave, the chips of the future will need a shield that protects them against tampering. (We assume there will be a technological cat-and-mouse game between governments who want to track the weapons with RFID chips and arms traffickers who want to deal the weapons off the grid.) When weapons with RFID chips were recovered, it would be possible to trace where they’d been if the chips themselves were designed to store location data. This wouldn’t stop the trafficking of arms but it would put pressure on the larger actors in the arms trade. States that donate weapons to rebel movements often want to know what happens to those arms.

pages: 510 words: 120,048

Who Owns the Future?
by Jaron Lanier
Published 6 May 2013

The strategic goal has to be to change the game theory landscape so that the motivations for creepiness are reduced. That is the very essence of the game of civilization. Some Good Reasons to Be Tracked by the Cloud Given the way networks are structured now, one reaction to creepiness might be to pull back from connecting to cloud software. You might be tempted to go off the grid as much as possible to not be tracked. That would be a shame, because there are real benefits to using cloud computing, and there will be more and more benefits in the future. People already routinely tap “yes” to allow tracking options in their phones, and then expect the cloud to recommend nearby restaurants, keep track of their jogging, and warn about where the nearby traffic jams have formed.

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If you feel you can’t, you haven’t really engaged fully with the possibilities of who you might be, and what you might make of your life in the world. People still ask me every day if they should quit Facebook. A year ago it was just a personal choice, but now it has become a choice that comes with a price. The option of not using the services of Siren Servers becomes a trial, like living “off the grid.” It’s crucial to experience resisting social pressure at least once in your life. When everyone around you insists that you’ll be outcast and left behind unless you conform, you have to experience what it’s like to ignore them and chart your own course in order to discover yourself as a person.

pages: 469 words: 132,438

Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet
by Varun Sivaram
Published 2 Mar 2018

Shahriar Chowdhury, Shakila Aziz, Sebastian Groh, Hannes Kirchhoff, and Walter Leal Filho, “Off-Grid Rural Area Electrification Through Solar-Diesel Hybrid Minigrids in Bangladesh: Resource-Efficient Design Principles in Practice,” Journal of Cleaner Production 95 (2015): 194–202, doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.02.062. 18. Global Off-Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA), “Global Off-Grid Solar Market Report Semi-Annual Sales and Impact Data.” 19. World Bank Group (WBG), “Solar Program Brings Electricity to Off-the-Grid Rural Areas in Bangladesh,” October 12, 2016, http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/10/10/solar-program-brings-electricity-off-grid-rural-areas. 20. Shahidur R. Khandker et al., Surge in Solar-Powered Homes: Experience in Off-Grid Rural Bangladesh (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2014). 21.

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Sebastian Groh and Mathias Koepke, “A System Complexity Approach to Swarm Electrification,” University College London, 2015, http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1469412/1/283-290.pdf. 48. Sara Baidei, “‘Swarm Electrification’ in Bangladesh Lets Neighbours Swap Solar Electricity,” Motherboard, November 29, 2016, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mesolshare-rural-bangladesh-swarm-electrification-off-the-grid. 49. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) “Off-Grid Market Trends Report 2016,” Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Lighting Global in cooperation with the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association, February 2016, http://www.energynet.co.uk/webfm_send/1690. 50. Stephen D. Comello, Stefan J. Reichelstein, Anshuman Sahoo, and Tobias S.

pages: 454 words: 139,350

Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy
by Benjamin Barber
Published 20 Apr 2010

They both want to be born again so as to be born yesterday, born into a former epoch before Nietzsche tried to persuade us that God had died; they want martyrdom before Weber’s prophecy that rational men and bureaucratic governments will disenchant the world can come true. Some join fundamentalist collectives, others cultivate a pioneer solitude, going “off the grid” to combat the “new world order” they believe is endangering the antimodern values they cherish.22 They may break their heads against time itself, but time has not been a friend to either religion or morals in recent centuries. Even the pragmatists who are prepared to live with what history delivers may seek deliverance from the lives they are bequeathed.

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The Gospel Music Association had to announce in 1994 that married Christian pop singer Michael English had gotten Marabeth Jordan, another man’s wife and a singer in the trio First Call, pregnant—proving perhaps that he who uses the tools of Devil McWorld is likely to be snared by the devil. 22. Philip Weiss offers a stunning account of new age reactionary drop-outs in his “Off the Grid,” The New York Times Magazine, January 6, 1995, pp. 24–52. 23. Charles B. Strozier has written a fascinating account of the apocalyptic side of fundamentalism; see Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994). See also Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Beliefin Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).

Mastering Prezi for Business Presentations
by Russell Anderson-Williams
Published 24 Jul 2012

You can see this in the following screenshot with the same frame we looked at a moment ago. Now the grid in the center of the screen is a lot wider and shorter. If you're using a projector or screen that operates at the 16:9 ratio, then your frames and content need to fit inside the grid. Pressing the Ctrl + Shift + M keys again will switch off the grid view. If you're certain your Prezi will be projected, then use the Ctrl + Shift + M shortcut as soon as you create the new Prezi file. Why you need to know about ratios? Nowadays, most PCs and Laptops are widescreen. But the majority of projectors on the market have an aspect ratio of 4:3. The term aspect ratio refers to the ratio of a picture's width to its height.

pages: 193 words: 51,445

On the Future: Prospects for Humanity
by Martin J. Rees
Published 14 Oct 2018

It shines especially intensely on Asia and Africa where energy demand is predicted to rise fastest. Unlike fossil fuel, it produces no pollution, and no miners get killed. Unlike nuclear fission, it leaves no radioactive waste. Solar energy is already competitive for the thousands of villages in India and Africa that are off the grid. But on a larger scale it remains more expensive than fossil fuels and only becomes economically viable due to subsidies or feed-in tariffs. But eventually these subsidies have to stop. If the Sun (or wind) is to become the primary source of our energy, there must be some way to store it, so there’s still a supply at night and on days when the wind doesn’t blow.

pages: 778 words: 239,744

Gnomon
by Nick Harkaway
Published 18 Oct 2017

About the Book Near-future Britain is not just a nation under surveillance but one built on it: a radical experiment in personal transparency and ambient direct democracy. Every action is seen, every word is recorded. Diana Hunter is a refusenik, a has-been cult novelist who lives in a house with its own Faraday cage: no electronic signals can enter or leave. She runs a lending library and conducts business by barter. She is off the grid in a society where the grid is everything. Denounced, arrested and interrogated by a machine that can read your life history from your brain, she dies in custody. Mielikki Neith is the investigator charged with discovering how this tragedy occurred. Neith is Hunter’s opposite. She is a woman in her prime, a stalwart advocate of the System.

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It makes no sense. What could Hunter possibly have to hide, that she would endure this, if not for ever, at least for just long enough? Surely no one is so wretchedly ornery as to die out of spite? She had a good life, a nice place to live. For social contact she had her neighbours, bartering and making trades off the grid, upcycling and retooling. She had her school for miniature refuseniks, the local kids to whom she read moderately inappropriate stories. Neith, indeed, remembers some of them from her own childhood: harmlessly wicked value-inversion jokes about kindly monsters and nasty knights. Diana Hunter was angry and formerly successful and where she was not loved she was mostly left alone.

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For a vertiginous moment she imagines Hunter coming down here, with some favoured child from her book club, to play with boats in the well, and no greater meaning than that. She sees herself still fretting at this puzzle in a decade, or in five, living here in ghostly echo of the subject of her investigation: an off-the-grid refusenik of no consequence, growling at the passage of time and at her own lost chances. Rebus, the fifth of four. Neith sways on the edge of the well and almost falls in, light-headed. How long has it been since she slept? Since she was safe? Well. Hunter survived longer, so she can do it too.

pages: 153 words: 52,175

Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload
by Mark Hurst
Published 15 Jun 2007

Important or not, read or unread, everything simply disappears, never to bother her again. When I expressed some concern about her method, she replied, “Oh, if it’s really important, they’ll write back.” There’s another possible misinterpretation of “let the bits go,” and that’s not to use bits at all. Live off the grid with no e-mail, no cell phone, no digital camera, no Internet access at all. Such a lifestyle might be appropriate for some people, but not for anyone who needs to work with digital technology. Bit literacy means engaging the bits, just as any discipline requires meeting the challenge, or the material, at hand.

pages: 181 words: 52,147

The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future
by Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever
Published 2 Apr 2017

At its launch, Elon Musk said that he’s confident the batteries will reach a price of $100 per kWh by 2020 (the average price was $1,200/kWh in 2010). Tesla is also building a version of its battery technology for use in home and business, the Powerwall, which will allow homes that capture solar energy to be completely off the grid—not dependent on the utility company even to store energy. By the way, many new solar technologies are in development. For example, scientists are experimenting with a new material called perovskite, a light-sensitive crystal that has the potential to be more efficient, less expensive, and more versatile than any solar solutions to date.

pages: 171 words: 54,334

Barefoot Into Cyberspace: Adventures in Search of Techno-Utopia
by Becky Hogge , Damien Morris and Christopher Scally
Published 26 Jul 2011

He was a writer, educator and so on, and I remember him sat in our big fireplace room one night with his laptop, with his face bathed in its light. And I remember sitting there and just having this moment where I thought: ‘That’s it. That’s perfect. You go to a place like Grindstone where you’re off the grid and you’re with your comrades and your extended political family but you’re also connected and you’ve got your tools with you and you can write.’ To see this proper tool there really kind of blew my mind and I thought, ‘Will I someday be able to sit in the hammock at Moonwatcher’s Point with a laptop on my lap?’

pages: 189 words: 52,741

Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Live Your Dreams, Ignite Your Passions and Run Your Business From Anywhere in the World
by Jesse Krieger
Published 2 Jun 2014

CREATIVE CONSTRUCTS Take a Break, Do What You Crave Drop an Anchor and Ride the Waves… Creative Constructs are temporary lifestyle changes that draw on your interests and passions to shuffle the deck in the game of life. Whether this means traveling for the summer, living abroad for half a year, participating in an intensive learning program or going off the grid and working on an organic farm for a season, creative constructs are an integral part of a dream lifestyle. Creative Constructs consist of setting parameters that let you work, learn and play; meet new people, relax and have an experience that is long enough to be meaningful, but not so long that you’re committing to a whole different lifestyle long-term or indefinitely.

pages: 173 words: 55,328

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
by George Packer
Published 14 Jun 2021

A Bay Area package sorter went to work with a feeling of broken glass in her throat because she feared ending up homeless. An assistant manager at an infected Amazon warehouse on Staten Island was fired for leading a walkout after symptomatic colleagues had to keep working in order to be paid. “They’re in this building, getting sick,” he said. “And the people making all the money are comfortable off the grid somewhere, and they’re getting on TV and they’re saying everything is fine while we’re in the trenches. Jeff Bezos can kiss my ass.” An essential worker was a worker who would be fired for staying home with symptoms of the virus. Think about it enough and you realize that the miraculous price and speed of a delivery of organic microgreens from Amazon Fresh to your doorstep depends on the fact that the people who grow, sort, pack, and deliver it have to work while sick.

pages: 194 words: 54,355

100 Things We've Lost to the Internet
by Pamela Paul
Published 14 Oct 2021

[ 43 ] IGNORING PEOPLE It was useful to pretend to have no idea someone was trying to reach you when you could actually get away with it. How could you have known? You were out, you were sleeping, you were busy, you were away, you had an emergency, you didn’t get the message and you are only just hearing about this now. It was possible and believable to be off the grid. Someone else could pick up the landline when it rang and say you weren’t home. If you worked in the office, someone else could answer the phone and tell them you were unavailable. Sorry! Being online is like constantly being asked on a playdate with the kid you’ve been desperately trying to avoid, the kid who always manages to know where you are, lurking around the edge of your friend group, his mom cornering your mom at pickup time.

pages: 473 words: 154,182

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them
by Donovan Hohn
Published 1 Jan 2010

There was also, among other things, a broken showerhead: when you turned it on, the showerhead and hose would pop from the plastic stall and fizz around like a demented snake. Pallister was anxious to finish all the repairs and return to Anchorage. He had people to call, donations to raise, an airlift to arrange. Out here in the wilderness, we were off the grid, incommunicado. The yacht’s sat phone was too expensive to use except in emergencies, and then, too, for the past few days, it had been on the fritz. Every extra day his crew spent out here cost Pallister more money. He was also racing against the seasons. Fall comes early to the Kenai Peninsula’s outer coast.

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Then I saw the silvery flock dive below the waves. Flying fish! I said to myself. Like the ones suspended over the plastic waves in the dolphin diorama at the American Museum of Natural History! By noon on that first day, the Hawaiian Islands, by some measures the most isolated islands on earth, had sunk below the northern horizon. We were off the grid, out of contact, out of sight, beating our way south, in oceans three miles deep. By dinnertime, we were fifty miles south of South Point, conducting our fourth sample of the day, letting the sails luff. The seas had moderated a little. According to Moore, we were now at sea state 5 on the Beaufort scale.

pages: 476 words: 148,895

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
by Michael Pollan
Published 22 Apr 2013

But compared with his voluble, flamboyant mentor, Miller comes across as very much the Protestant baker, spare with his pronouncements and something of an ascetic. Though he used to own bakeries and manage employees (including Chad Robertson), for the past seven years he has stripped his vocation down to its Thoreauvian essentials: one man, some sacks of wheat, a couple of machines, and an oven. Miller’s Bake House is almost completely off the grid: Solar panels power the mill and the cold room where he retards his loaves, and the Italian deck oven is fired with wood that he chops himself. I asked if the wood imparted flavor to the bread. “It’s not about the flavor. It’s that I would rather not be a party to wars for oil.” The afternoon I visited, Miller was agonizing over whether to add a pinch of ascorbic acid—often used to strengthen low-protein flours—to his Kamut dough.

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As with cooking, it offers your body an energy savings. Unlike cooking, however, the energy required to ferment food does not need to come from burning wood or fossil fuel. It is self-generated, by the metabolism of microbes breaking down the substrate. Fermentation can easily be done off the grid, a quality that commends it to the enviros, anarchists, and peak-oil types who help make up the subculture. “The historical bubble of refrigeration may not last,” Katz likes to point out. When that particular bubble bursts, you’re going to want to know people like Sandor Katz and microbes like L. plantarum.

pages: 527 words: 147,690

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection
by Jacob Silverman
Published 17 Mar 2015

Along the way, we’ve developed an ad hoc tolerance for these gestures, as well as a shared familiarity and understanding. Who hasn’t stopped an activity mid-stride so that a friend can send out some update about it? Who hasn’t done it himself? On the social web, the person who doesn’t share is subscribing to an outmoded identity and can’t be included in the new social space. If not off the grid, he or she simply isn’t on the grid that matters—he may have e-mail, but he’s not on Facebook, or he’s present but not using it enough. (The prevailing term for this is “lurker,” an old online message board term, slightly pejorative, describing someone who reads the board but doesn’t post.) It’s not uncommon to ask why a friend is on Twitter but rarely tweets, or why she often likes Facebook statuses but never posts her own.

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No one should be able to impose his definition of privacy on you. We also will have to reclaim privacy from the crowd that says it no longer exists—that it’s just a myth—and from nostalgists who tend to view it mythically, as some prelapsarian state that can be recovered. We can’t return to a pre-digital world of living off the grid, which never existed in the first place, but we can better understand the relationship between this flood of personal data and its uneasy relationship with privacy. WHAT EXACTLY IS PRIVACY? Privacy remains a difficult subject in part because there’s no standard conception of what it is.

pages: 517 words: 155,209

Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation
by Michael Chabon
Published 29 May 2017

Though it was not quite summer and not yet noon, my guide, Ahmad S., estimated the temperature had climbed to 37 degrees, or as my mind translated it, almost 100. “Drink,” the water lab technician reminded me. I lifted my bottle to my lips and without thinking, drained it. A first-world privilege, this—to be thoughtless about water. We were at the ankles of the West Bank, far off the grid, in the cab of Ahmad’s dusty truck. Ahmad, twenty-nine, Palestinian, comes from a town northwest of Hebron called Halhul. With his light-brown skin, gelled hair, gold chain, slim-fitting jeans, and Nikes, he could pass for one of the Dominican guys in my neighborhood back home in New York City.

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We stuffed ourselves silly with qatayef, coffee, and dates until at last we were full. I gazed up at the sky, now punched through with a thousand stars, and streaked with meteors. Its perfect clarity made me gasp. That night felt free in part because no veil of light pollution obscured it. We were at the edge of the world, in the Milky Way. We were that far off the grid. Journey to the West Bank Mario Vargas Llosa 1. In the 1970s I was quite active in the defense of Israel, getting myself involved in many polemical exchanges. At that time in Latin America it was fashionable, not only amongst the far left but also the moderate left and a great number of centrist and right-wing organizations, to attack Israel.

pages: 590 words: 156,001

Fodor's Oregon
by Fodor's Travel Guides
Published 13 Jun 2023

(Ch. 3) 3 Crater Lake’s blue waters Crater Lake reaches depths of nearly 2,000 feet and sunlight filters down 400 feet, making it one of the most striking sights in the West. (Ch. 8) 4 Drive Oregon’s byways For a wild road trip, check out Oregon’s lesser-known scenic byways, which loop through river gorges, the sunny high desert, and off-the-grid territory far from the reaches of cell towers. (Ch. 4, 6) 5 Stroll the Gardens Portland is blessed with several beautiful gardens and stopping at the International Rose Test Garden and Japanese Garden in Washington Park is a fragrant must. 6 Time travel at the Painted Hills Part of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, the distinctive stripes seen in the Painted Hills represent more than 30 million years of geological history.

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Le Guin set this award-winning 1971 novel in a futuristic and dystopian version of Portland (in 2002). There have been two TV movies made from the book. LEAVE NO TRACE The critically acclaimed 2018 movie is based on the novel My Abandonment by Peter Rock—itself inspired by a true story—and follows the plight of a military veteran and his daughter who live off the grid in Portland’s expansive Forest Park until being found and relocated to a Christmas tree farm in rural Oregon. MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO Locally based LGBTQ+ indie director Gus Van Sant’s 1991 drama, starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, was filmed primarily in Portland, with many scenes at what is now the posh Sentinel hotel.

Fodor's Hawaii 2013
by Fodor's
Published 22 Jul 2012

While Mother Nature rarely gives her itinerary in advance, if you’re lucky, a hike or boat ride may pay off with spectacular views of nature’s wonder. Sunrise and sunset makes for the best viewing opportunities. Go horseback riding in Waipio Valley. The Valley of the Kings owes its relative isolation and off-the-grid status to the two-thousand-foot cliffs book-ending the valley. Really, the only way to explore this sacred place is on two legs—or four. We’re partial to the horseback rides that wend deep into the rain forest to a series of waterfalls and pools—the setting for a perfect romantic getaway. Kauai Tour Napali Coast by boat.

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. | 1 mile inland from Hwy. 19 en route to Akaka Falls State Park | 96728. Fodor’s Choice | Waipio Valley. Bounded by 2,000-foot cliffs, the “Valley of the Kings” was once a favorite retreat of Hawaiian royalty. Waterfalls drop 1,200 feet from the Kohala Mountains to the valley floor, and the sheer cliff faces make access difficult. Though completely off the grid today, Waipio was once a center of Hawaiian life; somewhere between 4,000 and 20,000 people made it their home between the 13th and 17th centuries. To preserve this pristine part of the island, commercial-transportation permits are limited—only five outfitters offer organized valley trips and they’re not allowed to take visitors to the beach: environmental laws protect the swath of black sand.

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The large common room with its stunning ocean views and lava-rock fireplace is a big attraction, especially at the wine tasting–and–hors d’oeuvres hour each evening. Pros: eco-friendly hotel; hot and healthy breakfast; beautiful views. Cons: very remote location; unreliable phone access. TripAdvisor: “a gorgeous getaway,” “beautiful and tasty breakfasts,” “off the grid.” | Rooms from: $210 | 45-3503 Kahana Dr. | Honokaa | Honokaa | 96727 | 888/775–2577, 808/775–1118 | www.waianuhea.com | 4 rooms, 1 suite | Breakfast. Waipio Wayside. $ | B&B/INN | Nestled amid the avocado, mango, coffee, and kukui trees of a historic plantation estate (circa 1932), this serene inn provides a retreat close to the Waipio Valley.

Simply Living Well: A Guide to Creating a Natural, Low-Waste Home
by Julia Watkins
Published 6 Apr 2020

The recipes and tips in this book reflect those values every bit as much as they offer ways for individuals to reduce their personal waste while demanding responsibility from businesses and governments. My first encounter with zero-waste was in Africa, nearly twenty years ago. I was serving in the Peace Corps and living in a remote village in the West African country of Guinea. Rural, roadless, and entirely off the grid, life in my village was resolutely zero-waste—mostly because there was so very little to waste in the first place. Practically everything was made by hand, often from materials drawn directly from the natural world. Manufactured goods that did find their way to the village, once they’d fulfilled their intended function, were repurposed and reused, usually until they had nearly disintegrated from so much wear and tear.

The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs
by Nicolas Pineault
Published 6 Dec 2017

Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization. iUniverse © 2017 N&G Media Inc. 12 Instead of staying within the usual 50-60 Hz range, Dirty Electricity is a bum who likes to emit a lot of EMFs in what are called the intermediate frequencies — ranging from 300 Hz to 10 MHz.12 What this all means in plain English: when the electricity in your home or workplace is dirty, it constantly irradiates these spikes of intermediate frequency Electric Fields which can have serious health effects according to Miller — especially those between 2 kHz and 100 kHz in the Radio Frequency (RF) range. 13 12 See Magda Havas’ video “Dirty Electricity Explained” at youtube.com/watch?v=vbebpRvwd8k © 2017 N&G Media Inc. We Live In A Big EMF Soup Unless you decided to live off the grid, never use a smartphone, destroy your wifi router and stick to candlelight inside your home — you’re constantly getting exposed to man-made EMFs, at levels millions of times higher than what you would naturally be exposed to in nature. As I’m writing these lines, my cool-looking wireless mouse is emitting a 2.4 GHz RF signal at a pulse of 500 times a second13 in order connect with my MacBook Pro laptop.

pages: 208 words: 57,602

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
by Kevin Roose
Published 9 Mar 2021

The final phase in Catherine’s plan is the “trial separation”—a twenty-four-hour period in which you don’t use your phone at all. (I’m an overachiever, so I aimed for forty-eight hours.) I booked an Airbnb on a farm a few hours away, set my out-of-office autoresponder, and my wife and I took off for a weekend of off-the-grid leisure. A phone-free mini-vacation involved some complications. Without Google Maps, we got lost and had to pull over for directions. Without Yelp, we had trouble finding open restaurants. But mostly, it was an amazing two days, filled with the kinds of small, subtle pleasures I hadn’t experienced in years.

Costa Rica
by Matthew Firestone , Carolina Miranda and César G. Soriano
Published 2 Jan 2008

If you’re not traveling with a buddy, a pocket mirror will also help as these little buggers have a habit of turning up in some rather uncomfortable places. Return to beginning of chapter Getting There & Around The best option for exploring the peninsula in depth is to have your own private transportation. However, you will need to bring a spare tire (and plenty of patience): roads in Osa are extremely poor, as most of the peninsula is still off the grid. Major towns in Osa such as Golfito and Puerto Jiménez are serviced by regular buses, though public transportation can get sporadic once you leave these major hubs. Unpaved roads can also make for a long and jarring bus ride, so it’s probably best to bring a rolled-up fleece for your bottom and an mp3 player for your sanity.

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Offshore in the bay itself, schools and pods of migrating dolphins flit through turquoise waters. Of course, one of the reasons why Bahía Drake is brimming with wildlife is that it remains largely cut off from the rest of the country. With little infrastructure beyond dirt roads and the occasional airstrip, most of the area remains off the grid. However, Bahía Drake is home to a number of stunning wilderness lodges, which all serve as ideal bases for exploring this veritable ecological gem. And of course, if you’re planning on visiting Sirena ranger station in Corcovado (Click here), you can trek south along the coastline and enter the park at San Pedrillo ranger station.

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With so much virgin nature at their disposal, kids can be kids as they swim, snorkel, hike, ride and boat their way through the great outdoors. Accommodations are also varied, allowing you to either spoil your family with eco-luxury, or win them over with rustic charm. Return to beginning of chapter Sleeping & Eating This area is off the grid, so many places do not have electricity (pack a flashlight) or hot water. Reservations are recommended in the dry season (mid-November to the end of April). While budget and midrange options are available, accommodations in Bahía Drake are heavily skewed toward the top end. But, you can expect tremendous quality and service for your dollars, especially as you ascend the price ladder.

Lonely Planet Chile & Easter Island (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Carolyn McCarthy and Kevin Raub
Published 19 Oct 2015

NATURE Parque Nacional Chiloé and Parque Tantauco protect rainforest with native wildlife. To meet Magellanic and Humboldt penguins, visit Monumento Natural Islotes de Puñihuil. Click here Northern Patagonia Culture Outdoors Nature CULTURE Long the most isolated part of Chile, Patagonia’s northern region is a cowboy stronghold. Visit rural settlers off the grid who live in harmony with a wicked and whimsical mother nature. OUTDOORS Land the big one fly-fishing, raft wild rivers or mosey into the backcountry on a fleece-mounted saddle. Scenery and real adventure abound on the Carretera Austral, Chile’s unpaved southern road. NATURE Patagonia can get pretty wild.

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Fishing, trekking and horseback riding are king here and each offers days of satiating adventures in the area. LLANADA GRANDE & BEYOND After the lake crossing at Tagua-Tagua, the gravel road continues by mountainsides peppered with patches of dead coigüe trees (killed by fire but tragically pretty) and lands still traversed by gaucho families on horseback. This is Llanada Grande – you are now off the grid. A system of pioneer homes and rustic B&Bs is in place for travelers here (inquire at Campo Eggers), making your treks and horseback rides feel a little less touristy, a little more cultural. The road is being slowly forged all the way to Argentina, though Argentina has no plans to continue it on their side.

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Expresos Tenaún ( 09-9500-3305) runs four buses between Castro and Tenaún Monday to Saturday (CH$1500, 1½ hours), and two on Sunday, stopping in Dalcahue along the way. The schedule is posted on the window of Minimercado Ita on the main road through town. About 3km before Tenaún coming from Dalcahue is the turn off for San Juan, a tiny village even more off the grid. After 6km, the road plunges into a serene bay surrounded by picturesque pastoral countryside, leading to Iglesia de San Juan Bautista (1887), another Unesco wooden house of worship sitting in the tiny grassed village square. Hospedaje Elizabeth ( 09-8866-6570; hospedaje.elizabeth-sanjuan@hotmail.com; r without bathroom CH$5000) is dead simple and cramped but offers both sea and church views.

Coastal California
by Lonely Planet

Depending on the waves, winds and tide, the tones emitted by the organ can sound like nervous humming, a gurgling baby or prank-call heavy breathing. Fort Mason HISTORIC SITE ( 415-345-7500; www.fortmason.org) Army sergeants would be scandalized by the frolicking at this former military outpost, including comedy improv workshops, vegetarian brunches at Greens (Click here) and Off the Grid ( Click here ), where gourmet trucks circle like pioneer wagons. THE PRESIDIO Presidio Visitors Center HISTORIC BUILDING ( 415-561-4323; www.nps.gov/prsf; cnr Montgomery St & Lincoln Blvd; 9am-5pm) San Francisco’s official motto is still ‘Oro in Paz, Fierro in Guerra’ (Gold in Peace, Iron in War), but its main base hasn’t seen much military action since it was built by conscripted Ohlone as a Spanish presidio (military post) in 1776.

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The Grove AMERICAN $ ( 415-474-1419; 2016 Fillmore St; dishes $8-12; 7am-11pm; ) Rough-hewn recycled wood and a stone fireplace give this Fillmore St cafe ski-lodge coziness for made-to-order breakfasts, working lunches with salads, sandwiches and wi-fi, and chat sessions with warm-from-the-oven cookies and hot cocoa. THE MARINA & COW HOLLOW Off the Grid FOOD TRUCKS $ (http://offthegridsf.com; Fort Mason parking lot; dishes under $10; 5-10pm Fri; ) Some 30 food trucks circle their wagons at SF’s largest mobile-gourmet hootenanny (other nights/locations attract less than a dozen trucks; see website). Arrive before 6:30pm or expect 20-minute waits for Chairman Bao’s clamshell buns stuffed with duck and mango, Roli Roti’s free-range herbed roast chicken, or dessert from The Crème Brûlée Man.

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Screamin’ Mimi DESSERT $ ( 707-823-5902; www.screaminmimisicecream.com; 6902 Sebastopol Ave; 11am-10pm) Delish homemade ice cream. Drinking & Entertainment Hardcore Espresso CAFE ( 707-823-7588; 1798 Gravenstein Hwy S; 6am-7pm; ) Meet local hippies and art freaks over coffee and smoothies at this classic Nor-Cal off-the-grid, indoor-outdoor coffeehouse that’s essentially a corrugated-metal-roofed shack surrounded by umbrella tables. The organic coffee is the town’s best. Hopmonk Tavern PUB ( 707-829-7300; www.hopmonk.com; 230 Petaluma Ave; 11:30am-10pm, later weekends) Always-fun beer garden with 76 craft brews, several housemade.

pages: 239 words: 62,005

Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason
by Dave Rubin
Published 27 Apr 2020

I began to sleep better, and old songs would randomly pop into my head as the available space in my brain got freed up. I also became less anxious and more present in my daily life. According to the people around me, including my mother-in-law, the results were noticeable—I’d officially got my old, “pre-phone” self back. And it felt good. To this day I still take weekends off the grid and try to have entire days without any electronic gadgets. Obviously, I’m not saying that technology is all bad. My career and life have clearly been transformed by YouTube and that whole universe, but there certainly seems to be a weird link between today’s hyperpartisan divisions and our mass, 24-7 connectivity.

pages: 223 words: 60,909

Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech
by Sara Wachter-Boettcher
Published 9 Oct 2017

Acxiom Corporation, “Personicx Online Guide: 06 Casual Comfort,” 2014. 4. If you’re not sure how important this is, read security expert Bruce Schneier’s Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016). Twenty bucks says you’ll want to throw your phone in a river and move to a cabin off the grid by the time you’re done. 5. Andrew J. Hawkins, “Uber Wants to Track Your Location Even When You’re Not Using the App,” Verge, November 30, 2016, http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/30/13763714/uber-location-data-tracking-app-privacy-ios-android. 6. Jon Russell, “Uber’s Moral Compass Needs Recalibration,” TechCrunch, November 19, 2014, https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/19/uber-off. 7.

pages: 192 words: 62,439

The Weed Runners: Travels With the Outlaw Capitalists of America's Medical Marijuana Trade
by Nicholas Schou
Published 31 Aug 2013

Hoxter’s girlfriend was a stunner, and the happy couple was soon in Vancouver unloading four hundred pounds of pot, which is how Hoxter met a friend of a friend nicknamed Art Nouveau, who became his partner in crime for the next twenty-five years. Thanks to his connections in Vancouver, a group of hippies who were the biggest pot dealers in British Columbia, Hoxter was never short of work when it came to smuggling weed. He spent most of the 1970s living off the grid at the Family’s commune in Montana, raising chickens and pigs and running pot across the border, one thousand pounds at a time. Every month a truck would come from Southern California, full of marijuana from Mexico. Hoxter had a collection of US Forestry Service topographical maps, and knew all the unused service roads that led to the Canadian border.

pages: 252 words: 60,959

Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World
by Vaclav Smil
Published 4 May 2021

Why we need bigger batteries It would be a lot easier to expand our use of solar and wind energy if we had better ways to store the large quantities of electricity we’d need to cover gaps in the flow of that energy. Even in sunny Los Angeles, a typical house roofed with enough photovoltaic panels to meet its average needs would still face daily shortfalls of up to 80 percent of the demand in January and daily surpluses of up to 65 percent in May. You can take such a house off the grid only by installing a voluminous and expensive assembly of lithium-ion batteries. And even a small national grid—one handling 10 to 30 gigawatts—could rely entirely on intermittent sources only if it had gigawatt-scale storage capable of working for many hours. Since 2007, more than half of humanity has lived in urban areas, and by 2050 more than 6.3 billion people will live in cities, accounting for two-thirds of the global population, with a rising share in megacities of more than 10 million people (see the rise of megacities, this page).

pages: 197 words: 62,544

Fifty Places to Dive Before You Die: Diving Experts Share the World's Greatest Destinations
by Chris Santella
Published 1 Oct 2008

Port Hardy is the farthest point north on the island that one can drive to, and its largely undeveloped environs give one a sense of what conditions must have been like here hundreds of years ago. If Port Hardy is remote, the diving lodges most visitors frequent seem worlds away. “God’s Pocket and The Hideaway are a little off the grid,” Jeffrey concluded. “But for the lucky few that get there, they’re in for a real treat.” * * * JEFFREY L. ROTMAN is one of the world’s leading underwater photographers. He is the author of numerous books and articles on marine life and was named BBC Underwater Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 1991.

pages: 561 words: 167,631

2312
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Published 22 May 2012

Why wouldn’t they just dispose of it?” “I don’t know. Possibly they intended to use it again and didn’t know about the Saturnian tracking system.” “I don’t like it.” “Neither do I.” “Maybe this ship is from the unaffiliateds,” Swan said. “Off record from the start.” “Are there ships entirely off the grid?” Wahram asked. “Yes,” Genette said briefly, plugging cords from Passepartout into ports on one of the consoles. “I have its data,” Passepartout said. “Let’s get out of here,” Genette said. “Passepartout says the balloons holding this thing up have been punctured. They’re big, but we need to get out of this thing before it starts falling fast.”

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She looked slightly electrocuted, one might say. She had been on Earth for the reanimation, so no doubt that had made her happy. But there was also a new set to her mouth, a little chisel mark between her eyebrows. “Wahram sent me to say you need to get out to a meeting on Titan,” she said. “It’s Alex’s group, and they’re meeting off the grid to discuss something important. Something about qubes. I’m going to go too. So can you tell me what this is all about?” Buying a little time to think it over, Genette brought the boat about and had Swan change pontoons. Once set on the new course, a tug on the mainsheet tilted her upright. She grinned a little fiercely at this sailor’s evasion, shook her head; she would not be distracted.

pages: 559 words: 169,094

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
by George Packer
Published 4 Mar 2014

Perriello’s office put them in touch with officials in Richmond, who said that food-grade canola wouldn’t qualify for a stimulus grant. Instead, Red Birch was encouraged to apply for a grant toward the purchase of a microturbine, which could generate electricity from the glycerin waste left over from making biofuel, take the refinery off the grid, and create a new income stream when Red Birch sold some of the power to other users. Dean got the application in just a few minutes ahead of the deadline. In January 2010, Perriello came to Martinsville to announce the award of $750,000 in federal stimulus funds for Red Birch to buy a microturbine.

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He had known for years, though he had told only a couple of people, always saving it up as his last thought at night before falling asleep. First, he would build a great big house, a mansion, just like the one Moses Cone, the nineteenth-century denim baron of Greensboro, built looking out over the Blue Ridge Mountains, with gables and dormers and huge front porches all painted white. Dean’s would be off the grid, with geothermal heat and air-conditioning, and solar panels on the roof. Then he would fill this sprawling house with abandoned children. The house would sit on a farm, a working farm, so that he could teach these children whom no one else wanted the skills and the ethic of that life—teach them to be Jefferson’s cultivators of the earth, the most valuable citizens, the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous.

pages: 257 words: 67,152

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
by Alex Epstein
Published 13 Nov 2014

If, in the future, those industries are able to overcome the many intractable problems involved in making dilute, unreliable energy into cheap, plentiful, reliable energy on a world scale, that would be fantastic. But it is dishonest to pretend that anything like that has happened or that there is a reason to think it will happen. To be sure, solar, wind, and biomass may have their utility for niche uses of energy. If you’re living off the grid and can afford it, an installation with a battery that can power a few appliances might be better than the alternative (no energy, or frequently returning to civilization for diesel fuel), but they are essentially useless in providing cheap, plentiful, reliable energy for 7 billion people—and to try to rely on them would be deadly.

Girl Walks Into a Bar . . .: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle
by Rachel Dratch
Published 29 Mar 2012

Little did we know the dog show we were going to weren’t no Westminster. I think it was some sort of preliminary round to get to the big time. We walked in and found it was held in this superdepressing arena that had rooms but looked like a warehouse. Unkempt people who looked as if they’d been living “off the grid” sat in canvas folding chairs surrounded by dog paraphernalia. Bumper stickers and old signs hung everywhere saying I HEART MY WESTIE or CAUTION—WIGGLEBUTT ZONE! and MY NEWFIE IS SMARTER THAN OUR PRESIDENT! Larger breeds like mastiffs and Saint Bernards were splayed out on the floor, eyes rolling up as if to say, “Get me the hell out of this stank hole.”

pages: 251 words: 67,801

And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
by Richard Engel
Published 9 Feb 2016

Then an equal number of ISIS teenagers, wearing sand-colored clothes and tan headscarves, filed past the stage, with a soundtrack of musical chants giving them a heroic air. They mounted the stage, each taking a place behind one of the soldiers, pointed handguns at the Syrians’ heads, and pulled the triggers at the same time. ISIS had become more than a savage terrorist group; it had also become a state of mind, a place off the grid of humanity where only ISIS rules mattered. While most of the horrific acts given an ISIS label were committed by “core” members in the caliphate, a growing number were carried out by “branches,” “offshoots,” or “affiliates” inspired by ISIS—or lone-wolf copycats turned on by ISIS snuff videos.

pages: 260 words: 67,823

Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever
by Alex Kantrowitz
Published 6 Apr 2020

The company’s most promising tools are making it possible for anyone to invent, and Scott started describing them. For instance, Lobe, a company Microsoft acquired in 2018, enables people with limited technical skills to build machine learning–powered programs. One of Lobe’s cofounders—with little knowledge of the underlying AI—used it to build a program that monitors the water tank levels in his off-the-grid house. With a web camera and some labeling, Scott told me, Lobe was able to identify a weight on the tank connected via rope to a float inside. As the weight moved up the tank, the program understood the water was going down, and updated the tank’s levels. “You feed these images into a machine-learning system.

pages: 211 words: 67,975

The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty
by Ethan Sherwood Strauss
Published 13 Apr 2020

If you wish to use your phone, say, to continue important communication with your wife about the day’s schedule, you’re in for an inundation of You. There’s no avoidance possible, if you wish to live in modernity. Waste is spilling into the ego’s reservoir no matter what. Only the Luddite, with his off-the-grid rainwater buckets, can sufficiently guard peace of mind. Following your reputation is a path to madness. Deep down I’d always known there was a dark side to the narcissism that keeps me checking Twitter mentions, but my defects were never so obvious as when scaled up like this. Your heart pounds as you watch these clips of talking heads debating your reputation.

pages: 232 words: 68,570

Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident
by Donnie Eichar
Published 20 Oct 2014

When I wasn’t in school, you could find me fishing or surfing in the warm coastal waters. In the summer of 1987, when I was fifteen, I took a trip with my father to the surfers’ playground of Costa Rica. It was my first trip out of the country, and at a time when tourists were not yet flocking to Central America. The resources available to off-the-grid travelers were limited, and my dad and I had to rely on mail-order maps to direct us to the country’s best surf beaches. When the maps arrived, I’d spread them out on the kitchen table and study the curves of the coastline and the comically specific instructions that hinted at adventure: “Pay off the locals with colones to access this gate” or “look for huge tree near river mouth to find wave.”

pages: 217 words: 69,892

My Year of Rest and Relaxation: A Novel
by Ottessa Moshfegh
Published 9 Jul 2018

I didn’t mind at all that when Reva finally came home and wrestled the bathroom door open, she shrieked, expressed her grave concern for my sanity, all while rushing me out the door, I guessed, because she had a stomach full of junk she wanted to puke up. I left the pills with her, all but the Infermiterol. At home, I called a locksmith, arranged a meeting with Ping Xi for the following afternoon, and called Dr. Tuttle to tell her I was going off the grid for the next four months. “Hopefully I won’t ever need to see you again,” I told her. “People say that to me all the time,” she said. That was the last time we spoke. Seven “ARE YOU SURE you won’t wear this stuff? What if I stretch something out, and then you want it back?”

pages: 229 words: 67,752

The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg: A Fast Paced Portal Adventure
by Eva St. John
Published 23 May 2020

The more you use it, the better it understands how you think and helps make the leaps for you.’ Julius’ jaw dropped. That sounded incredible, and he hit Google for early Beta versions of it, but came up blank. ‘Is it spelt Tiresias, like the blind Greek seer?’ ‘Yes, but don’t bother trying to find it. This is completely off the grid.’ Julius glared into his coffee and returned to the keyboard. As the hours past he became more engrossed in various leads, but nothing seemed to be making sense. He was aware of Neith working alongside him, but her concentration was also fixed on the screen. As well as trying to break the clue, the other three were trying to see if the egg had surfaced anywhere, or if they could track the location of Paul.

Chasing Slow: Courage to Journey Off the Beaten Path
by Erin Loechner
Published 10 Jan 2017

It is nearly midnight, and I have almost forgotten. As we wait for our driver, Washington, to pull the van around, I dig past our passports to find my phone. I will be deleting four apps this week: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. With each click of the X on an app’s upper right-hand corner, I feel farther from home. I am off the grid, in another country. I am stepping into a world that was created for me. I am stepping away, briefly, from the world I have created for myself. Washington pulls to the empty curb in a big white van with pink dust collected on the hubcaps. “Welcome to Ecuador,” he says with a wide smile as he gathers our bags.

Frommer's San Francisco 2012
by Matthew Poole , Erika Lenkert and Kristin Luna
Published 4 Oct 2011

• Best Cafe: If you want to know what life was like before Starbucks, spend some time at North Beach’s beloved Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store, 566 Columbus Ave. ( 415/362-0536), and Caffe Trieste, 601 Vallejo St. ( 415/392-6739). Fine dining on the sidewalk. Sample this cart and nearly 30 others Friday nights at Off the Grid, Fort Maison Center. • Best Food Truck Sampling: Food truck fans, we have found your Utopia, and it is called Off the Grid, a daily roving food court of trucks. Go to http://offthegridsf.com for locations and participants. Fridays sample nearly 30 vendors, 5 to 10pm at Fort Maison Center. Price Categories The restaurants listed below are classified first by area, then by price, using the following categories: Very Expensive, dinner from $75 per person; Expensive, dinner from $50 per person; Moderate, dinner from $35 per person; and Inexpensive, dinner less than $35 per person.

pages: 1,048 words: 187,324

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders
by Joshua Foer , Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton
Published 19 Sep 2016

Start your visit at the Salton Sea History Museum, located at 72–120 South Lincoln Street, Mecca. 33.253533 115.710179 Sun-bleached and over-salinated, Salton Sea turned from a resort paradise to a wasteland. Slab City NILAND An elephant made of shredded tires and scrap metal holds court at East Jesus, an off-the-grid artists’ community in the Sonoran Desert. Known to its residents as “the last free place,” Slab City is an isolated, off-the-grid desert community of squatters. Established in the early 1960s on a former United States Marine Corps training base, it is home to a motley mix of artists, travelers, retirees, and snowbirds. There is no local government, no running water, and no waste disposal system.

pages: 709 words: 191,147

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
by Nancy Isenberg
Published 20 Jun 2016

While the British had made an attempt to prohibit western migration through the Proclamation of 1763, the Revolutionary War removed such barriers and acquiesced to the flood of poorer migrants. Both crackers and squatters—two terms that became shorthand for landless migrants—supposedly stayed just one step ahead of the “real” farmers, Jefferson’s idealized, commercially oriented cultivators. They lived off the grid, rarely attended a school or joined a church, and remained a potent symbol of poverty. To be lower class in rural America was to be one of the landless. They disappeared into unsettled territory and squatted down (occupied tracts without possessing a land title) anywhere and everywhere. If land-based analogies were still needed, they were not to be divided into grades of soil, as Jefferson had creatively conceived, but spread about as scrub foliage or, in bestial terms, mangy varmints infesting the land.4 The plight of the squatter was defined by his static nature and transient existence.

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She rejected the idea that anyone could escape the cycle of poverty—not if it meant leaving one’s “homeland,” “family,” and “roots.” The tribal nature of poor whites was their strength. The sense of place and of land was their only ballast.11 Over the next fifteen years, Chute’s politics sharpened. In 1985, she did not call herself a redneck, but by 2000 she did. She lived off the grid, without modern plumbing, and until 2002 without a computer; she continued to wear work boots and bandanas. By now, “redneck” was a symbol of working-class populism for Chute. She organized her own Maine militia group, supported gun rights, and became an outspoken critic of corporate power. There was, she wrote in a postscript to the revised version of The Beans of Egypt in 1995, a “dangerous chasm in the classes [that] is alive and well in the United States of America.”

pages: 651 words: 186,130

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race
by Nicole Perlroth
Published 9 Feb 2021

—DAN RATHER CHAPTER 1 Closet of Secrets Times Square, Manhattan I was still covered in dust when my editors told me to surrender my devices, take an oath of silence, and step into Arthur Sulzberger’s storage closet in July of 2013. Just days earlier I’d been driving across the Maasai Mara in an open jeep, wrapping up a three-week trek across Kenya. I had hoped a few weeks off the grid would help repair nerves frayed by two years covering cyberterrorism. My sources kept insisting that this was just the beginning—that things would only get worse. I was only thirty then, but already felt the immense burden of my assigned subject. When I got the call to join the New York Times in 2010, I was writing magazine cover stories from Silicon Valley about venture capitalists who, by sheer luck or skill, had invested early in Facebook, Instagram, and Uber and were now all too aware of their celebrity status.

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“He quit his job and has been hiking the Appalachian Trail.” The Fed wouldn’t give me his name. But he did tell me this: he was not Israeli. And he’d never worked for Cellebrite. He was just another American hacker moonlighting as a mercenary. The whole time I’d been hunting for him in Miami, he was off the grid, walking a lonely narrow dirt path somewhere between Georgia and Maine. PART VI The Twister The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking … the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. —ALBERT EINSTEIN CHAPTER 17 Cyber Gauchos Buenos Aires, Argentina Our cab charged through a red light, knocking the bumper off another car.

Northern California Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Car-campers and travelers in RVs (recreational vehicles) won't have that same solitude; California’s state and national parks fill up every weekend in high season. Still, with such a diversity between the regional, state, county and federal campgrounds, there are campgrounds near and far to get you off the grid. Even RVs are (sometimes) accommodated at the super-basic (but often free!) national forest campgrounds. If you didn’t bring a tent, you can rent or buy camping gear in most cities – find good deals at REI (www.rei.com) in San Francisco and Sacramento. NO RESERVATIONS? If you can’t get reservations, call or show up to the campground between 10am and noon, when other campers are leaving.

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Taylor Maid FarmsCAFE ( GOOGLE MAP ; %707-634-7129; www.taylormaidfarms.com; 6790 McKinley St, Barlow; h6:30am-6pm Sun-Thu, to 7pm Fri, 7am-7pm Sat)S Choose your brew method (drip, press etc) at this third-wave coffeehouse that roasts its own organic beans. Exceptional seasonal drinks include lavender lattes. Hardcore EspressoCAFE ( GOOGLE MAP ; %707-823-7588; 81 Bloomfield Rd; h5am-7pm Mon-Fri, 6am-7pm Sat & Sun; W)S Meet local hippies and artists over coffee and smoothies at this classic NorCal, off-the-grid, indoor-outdoor coffeehouse, south of downtown, that’s essentially a corrugated-metal-roofed shack surrounded by umbrella tables. 7Shopping Antique shops line Gravenstein Hwy S toward Hwy 101. Funk & FlashCLOTHING ( GOOGLE MAP ; %707-829-1142; www.funkandflash.com; 228 S Main St; h11am-7pm) Disco-glam party clothes, inspired by Burning Man.

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Other facilities in the village don’t start operating until mid-May. oSequoia High Sierra CampCABIN$$ ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %866-654-2877; www.sequoiahighsierracamp.com; tent cabins without bath incl all meals adult/child $250/150; hmid-Jun–mid-Sep) A mile's hike deep into the Sequoia National Forest, this off-the-grid, all-inclusive resort is nirvana for those who don’t think luxury camping is an oxymoron. Canvas bungalows are spiffed up with pillow-top mattresses, feather pillows and cozy wool rugs. Restrooms and a shower house are shared. Reservations are required, and there's usually a two-night minimum stay.

pages: 220 words: 75,651

The Lunatic Express
by Carl Hoffman
Published 16 Mar 2010

Except for Drew Fenton, the loudmouth on the cell phone, Greyhound was the dregs of America, the poorest of the poor. My ticket from L.A. to D.C. was more than two hundred dollars; surely I could have found a flight for more or less the same. In America if you had an Internet connection and you wanted to get somewhere you found the lowest fare and flew, but the people on the bus were people off the grid. “We’re busiest around the first of the month,” said the driver. Which meant that its passengers traveled on government checks or whatever they could scrounge. A man boarded in Vegas with nothing but a plastic sack of Coke cans and he hadn’t showered in days, along with a skinny, sickly woman with a neck covered in tattoos.

pages: 265 words: 74,000

The Numerati
by Stephen Baker
Published 11 Aug 2008

For most of us, in truth, this won't make much difference. Our faces will show up along the same trails drawn by our airplane tickets, credit card bills, and—above all—our cell phones. Yet these facial images could prove vital for police. They could capture data on people who are struggling mightily to stay off the grid. A photo reader might find, for example, that the same green-eyed man with a bump in his nose and a scar on his lip has traveled at least three times this year between Newark, the rough Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, and Cairo. Does that face pop up on other databases? A global snooping network is already emerging.

pages: 236 words: 77,735

Rigged Money: Beating Wall Street at Its Own Game
by Lee Munson
Published 6 Dec 2011

Figure 9.2 $100,000 Gold Certificate Printed by the U.S. Treasury in 1934 It reminds me of a book, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder. I was researching this book while spending time in a Taos Earthship, The Dobson House. Unlike people, earthships are types of homes that don’t need gold to survive; they are off the grid and made of old tires and beer bottles. I was searching for the meaning of money, but only found a warm hot spring. The book is a factual account of the 1857 sinking of the SS Central America. A passenger ship retuning from the California Gold Rush, it was carrying what was then around $2 million in gold.

pages: 260 words: 77,007

Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?: Trick Questions, Zen-Like Riddles, Insanely Difficult Puzzles, and Other Devious Interviewing Techniques You ... Know to Get a Job Anywhere in the New Economy
by William Poundstone
Published 4 Jan 2012

• Divert gasoline to the region’s filling stations. There were fuel shortages in the Katrina evacuation. • In an authentic emergency, most people can’t leave fast enough, but you have to worry about three classes of stragglers: those who refuse to go; those who can’t evacuate without help (they’re disabled or in hospitals); and those so off the grid that they won’t hear about the evacuation (probably, many of them homeless or elderly). As a legal and practical matter, there’s not much that can be done when a resident chooses to stay behind. Efforts are better spent canvassing neighborhoods for people who want to evacuate but need help. Put into service all the existing dial-a-ride vans and ambulances, as they have special facilities for the frail and disabled

pages: 223 words: 77,566

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
by J. D. Vance
Published 27 Jun 2016

We received one letter from the school district informing us that I had collected so many unexcused absences that my parents might be summoned before the school or even prosecuted by the city. We found this letter hilarious: One of my parents had already faced a prosecution of sorts and hardly possessed any walking-around liberty, while the other was sufficiently off the grid that “summoning” him would require some serious detective work. We also found it frightening: Without a legal guardian around to sign the letter, we didn’t know what the hell to do. But as we had with other challenges, we improvised. Lindsay forged Mom’s signature, and the school district stopped sending letters home.

pages: 254 words: 76,064

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future
by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe
Published 6 Dec 2016

One of the smartest immunological strategies to mimic is the ability to operate at full capacity even during the heat of battle. This resilience involves a level of humility and acceptance unusual for the military mind-set common to cybersecurity outfits. But as Forrest’s research indicates, it may be the only safe way forward, short of following In-Q-Tel executive Dan Geer’s example and simply staying as far off the grid as possible.17 PS: Making Peace with Chaos, or Expecting the Unexpected I have a personal relationship with this principle because I was raised to value strength, but the circumstances of my adult life have required a unique degree of resilience. In January 2008 my son was diagnosed with “global developmental delays.”

pages: 253 words: 75,772

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
by Glenn Greenwald
Published 12 May 2014

He wanted to prevent any claim that he was some type of a foreign agent, which would be easier to make had he spent this period in hiding. He had set out to demonstrate, he said, that his movements could be accounted for, there was no conspiracy, and he was acting alone. To the Hong Kong and Chinese authorities, he looked like a normal businessman, not someone skulking off the grid. “I’m not planning to hide what or who I am,” he said, “so I have no reason to go into hiding and feed conspiracy theories or demonization campaigns.” Then I asked the question that had been on my mind since we first spoke online: Why had he chosen Hong Kong as his destination once he was ready to disclose the documents?

pages: 283 words: 73,093

Social Democratic America
by Lane Kenworthy
Published 3 Jan 2014

According to Eberstadt, growing reliance on government for help is undermining Americans’ “fierce and principled independence,” our “proud self-reliance.” Is this really reason for concern? Eberstadt’s alarm stems from his deployment of a misleading dichotomy. In his view, people are either givers or takers—taxpayers or benefit recipients. But this is mistaken. Each of us is both a giver and a taker. Every American who doesn’t live entirely off the grid pays some taxes. Anyone who is an employee pays payroll taxes, and anyone who purchases things at a store pays sales taxes. Likewise, every American receives benefits from government—if you or your children have attended a public school, if you’ve driven on a road, if you’ve had a drink of tap water or taken a shower in your dwelling, if you’ve deducted mortgage interest payments or a business expense from your federal income taxes, if you haven’t been stricken by polio, if you’ve never had a band of thugs remove you from your home at gunpoint, if you’ve visited a park or lounged on a beach or hiked a mountain trail, if you’ve used the Internet, and on and on.

pages: 231 words: 75,147

438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea
by Jonathan Franklin
Published 17 Nov 2015

Alvarenga scanned the waves and set his course at 280 degrees west-northwest. The radio in his bucket was beeping but Alvarenga never noticed because it was buried with his clothes. Many fishermen used the radio nonstop, like truck drivers chatting on the CB, but for Alvarenga life at sea meant going off the grid. He often spent two days at sea without a single call to shore. Alvarenga sought a total escape from the static and confusion of day-to-day life onshore. As he blasted through the waves and the mountains of the coast began to hunch toward the horizon, Alvarenga was relaxed. He did not realize he was traveling west at roughly the same pace at which a huge Norteño was stealthily forming and advancing from the northeast.

Raw Data Is an Oxymoron
by Lisa Gitelman
Published 25 Jan 2013

But today things seem different—in degree if not always in kind—now that every click, every move has the potential to count for something, for someone somewhere somehow. Is data about you yours, or should it be, now that data collection has become an always-everywhere proposition? Try to spend a day “off the grid” and you’d better leave your credit and debit cards, transit pass, school or work ID, passport, and cell phone at home—basically, anything with a barcode, magnetic strip, RFID, or GPS receiver.2 In short, if World War II helped to usher in the era of so-called Big Science, the new millennium has arrived as the era of Big Data.3 For this reason, we think a book like “Raw Data” Is an Oxymoron is particularly timely.

pages: 280 words: 75,820

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
by Winifred Gallagher
Published 9 Mar 2009

Since the muses of ancient Greece and accounts of Jehovah’s invention of the world, creativity has been linked to divinity, and even in modern secular circles, it’s often romanticized as mostly talent. Many other qualities are important to it, however, beginning with the capacity for both highly targeted, knowledge-based “convergent” thinking that searches for logical solutions to a problem and especially the freewheeling “divergent” type that ranges far off the grid to find new options. Along with knowledge, motivation, discipline, intelligence, confidence, and risk-taking, creativity calls for attention, from the almost subliminal awareness of a gestating idea to the conscious top-down “Eureka” on its realization. When we imagine Einstein coming up with E=MC2 or Michelangelo sketching the design for the Sistine ceiling, we envision these protean creators lost in rapt attention to their great breakthroughs.

pages: 259 words: 73,193

The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection
by Michael Harris
Published 6 Aug 2014

• • • • • Jaron Lanier wrote that “one good test of whether an economy is humanistic or not is the plausibility of earning the ability to drop out of it for a while without incident or insult.” This seems a good gauge to me. And I know that dropping out of our current information economy would indeed damage my livelihood, put me at odds with the “ordinary” lives of my peers. It’s this fact of the hassle—the incorrectness of dropping off the grid—that solidifies my ambition to do it. I decide that I will take that sabbatical from the future. For thirty days, I will return to something akin to the technological circumstances of my childhood. No Internet. No mobile phone. No Twitter or Facebook or text messages; no self-diagnosis of pneumonia on Mayoclinic.org.

pages: 269 words: 79,285

Silk Road
by Eileen Ormsby
Published 1 Nov 2014

He struggled to figure out how to set the site up, and nearing the end of 2010 despaired that he still didn’t have a site, let alone a server. He asked questions on technical forums and tinkered with his idea until, eventually, he had the genesis of an anonymous online black market. But first, the owner-operator of this new black market needed something to sell. He set up a lab in a cabin ‘off the grid’ where he produced several kilos of high-quality psilocybin mushrooms, also known as magic mushrooms, a popular psychedelic. Now he had a marketplace and he had a product. It was time to find the customers. That wouldn’t be hard. The internet was rife with websites where like-minded people got together to talk about getting high.

The Smartphone Society
by Nicole Aschoff

In the 1970s, a period of deep crisis, people joined communes or became farmers in the “back to the earth” movement. This vision of retreat is thriving today. Wistful articles detail the staying power of the Amish way of life, while YouTube is full of videos of people talking about their van life, or tiny home, or off-the-grid lifestyle. (Interestingly, most people who pursue a minimalist way of life, at least the ones we see on YouTube, seem to get rid of nearly everything except their smartphones.) As a personal or a family strategy, to retreat and get rid of or strictly limit phones as a way to deal with the issues raised here is perfectly acceptable.

pages: 277 words: 70,506

We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News
by Eliot Higgins
Published 2 Mar 2021

Online sleuthing emerged from the untapped powers of tech, and its future will follow this same course, expanding in parallel with the standard uses of digital inventions. Environmental damage is an obvious area for future scrutiny as the climate emergency produces ever more visible effects. Open-source investigation only hits a limit with events that happen off the grid – bombings in remote parts of Afghanistan, for example, are hard to study. An extreme example came in March 2014, with the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Unless a fisherman had taken a photo that day and caught the plane going down in the background, we would never find anything.

pages: 246 words: 76,561

Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture
by Justin McGuirk
Published 15 Feb 2014

In this model, the government would grant communal rather than individual leases, and residents would group together, perhaps a dozen neighbouring houses at a time, and take joint loans for the improvements they want to make. Instead of being plugged into the grid, San Agustín could be a district that operates off the grid, with solar power and a degree of autonomy. ‘Why can’t models developed for the elites function for the poor?’ asks Brillembourg. ‘Our idea was to take the worst place in the city and make it the most unique place in the city.’ This was a line of thinking that began in Petare. With Teolinda Bolívar’s research to hand, they noticed that people in Caracas’s biggest barrio tended to parcel land among family and friends.

pages: 269 words: 77,876

Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit From Global Chaos
by Sarah Lacy
Published 6 Jan 2011

This is key to how India’s urban dual economy functions. A smal base of employers who can afford to make cal s effectively subsidizes a massive base of service staff who can’t afford it but have no other way to be connected. Being poor in India isn’t about money. It’s about having no permanence, identity, and living off the grid. The cel phone is the lifeline, in the same way that education is the way out and connections are the way up. Telecom is the greenfield opportunity India got right, and that’s mostly because of a few scrappy private companies, not the government. There is concern about the proliferation of towers dotting the cityscapes, but those are problems to solve later.

pages: 244 words: 73,700

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
by Amanda Montell
Published 14 Jun 2021

Grainy film prints of the place depict a veritable Eden—children of all races blissfully play as their parents braid each other’s hair and befriend the neighboring wildlife. In one image, a twenty-five-year-old woman named Maria Katsaris (one of Jones’s lovers and a member of his innermost circle) grins while placing a genial index finger on the tip of a toucan’s beak. Scrap the historical context, and it looks like the sort of humble, off-the-grid elysium where I could’ve seen any number of my progressive LA pals going to escape the Trump administration. A pet toucan sounds nice. Today, most Americans have at least heard of Jonestown, if not the name, then the iconography: a commune in the jungle, a manic preacher, poisoned punch, corpses piled in the grass.

pages: 257 words: 77,612

The Rebel and the Kingdom: The True Story of the Secret Mission to Overthrow the North Korean Regime
by Bradley Hope
Published 1 Nov 2022

The same man invited into the White House for photos with the president, feted as a leading North Korean human rights campaigner, and praised as the creator of what had become an international organization to help North Koreans was now “armed and dangerous” and wanted on felony crimes. In the weeks prior to the arrest, Adrian sent out a last round of messages to close friends. The messages were mostly brief: he was facing serious issues because of the Spanish case, and the situation might require him to go off the grid. After Ahn was arrested, his communications went silent. He and Sam Ryu severed ties to everyone. Within Free Joseon, members had been working to establish a protocol for exactly this situation. The plan had been fine-tuned in the weeks since the Spain operation as the relationship with the FBI had gone south and details about the storming of the embassy had begun to trickle out in the international press.

USA Travel Guide
by Lonely, Planet

Dress warmly, buy gas in Tucson (the nearest gas station is 30 miles from the observatory) and note that children under eight years of age are not allowed at the evening program for safety reasons. The picnic area draws amateur astronomers at night. If you truly want to get away from it all, you can’t get much further off the grid than the huge and exotic Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument ( 520-387-6849; www.nps.gov/orpi; Hwy 85; per vehicle $8) along the Mexican border. It’s a gorgeous, forbidding land that supports an astonishing number of animals and plants, including 28 species of cacti, first and foremost its namesake organ-pipe.

…

For the best pictures of the bridge itself, park at the rest area on the western end of the span. Earthships NEIGHBORHOOD (www.earthship.net; Hwy 64; adult/under 12yr $5/free; 10am-4pm) Just 1.5 miles west of the bridge is the fascinating community of Earthships, with self-sustaining, environmentally savvy houses built with recycled materials that are completely off the grid. You can also stay overnight in one. Activities During summer, white-water rafting is popular in the Taos Box , the steep-sided cliffs that frame the Rio Grande. Day-long trips begin at around $100 per person; contact the visitor center for local outfitters, where there’s also good info about hiking and mountain-biking trails.

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Downtown San Francisco Top Sights Asian Art Museum C7 Coit Tower D3 Davies Symphony HallB7 Ferry Building F4 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art E6 Sights 1 14 Geary E6 2 49 Geary E6 3 77 Geary D6 4 Aquarium of the Bay D2 5 Aquatic Park BathhouseB2 6 Art Institute C3 7 Beat Museum D4 8 Cartoon Art Museum E6 9Catharine Clark GalleryE6 10Children’s Creativity MuseumE6 11Chinatown GateD5 12 Chinese Culture Center D4 13 Chinese Historical Society of America Museum D5 14 City Hall B7 15 Contemporary Jewish Museum E6 16 George Sterling Park B3 17 Grace Cathedral C5 18 Hyde Street Pier Historic ShipsB2 19 Musée Mécanique C2 20 Museum of African Diaspora E6 21Museum of Craft & Folk ArtsE6 22 Pier 39 D1 23San Francisco Maritime National Historical ParkB2 24 Transamerica Pyramid E4 25Union SquareD6 26 Uss Pampanito C2 Activities, Courses & Tours 27 Adventure Cat D2 28Alcatraz CruisesD2 29 Blazing Saddles B2 30 City Kayak G6 31Meeting Point for Fire Engine ToursB2 Sleeping 32 Golden Gate Hotel D5 33 Hotel Abri D6 34 Hotel BohèmeD4 35 Hotel des Arts D5 36 Hotel Rex D5 37 Hotel VitaleF5 38 Orchard Garden HotelD5 39 Pacific Tradewinds E5 40 Petite Auberge C5 41 San Remo Hotel C3 42 Stratford Hotel D6 Eating 43 Bar JulesA8 44 BenuE6 45 Bocadillos E4 46 Brenda's French Soul Food B6 47 Cinecittà D3 48 CoiE4 49 CotognaE4 50 Crown & Crumpet B2 51 FarmerbrownD6 52 Farmers Market F4 53 Gitane E5 Gott's Roadside (see 52) Hog Island Oyster Company (see 52) 54 In-N-Out Burger C2 55 JardinièreB7 Mijita (see 52) 56 Molinari D4 57 Off the Grid A2 58 Saigon Sandwich Shop C6 Slanted Door (see 52) Drinking 59 Aunt Charlie'sD6 60 Endup E7 61 Rebel Bar B8 62 Smuggler's CoveB7 63 Stud D8 64 Tosca Cafe D4 Entertainment 65 111 Minna E5 66 American Conservatory Theater D6 67AT&T ParkG7 68 Cat Club D8 69 Club Fugazi D3 70 Harlot E5 71 Mezzanine D7 TIX Bay Area (see 25) 72 War Memorial Opera House B7 73 Yerba Buena Center for the ArtsE6 Shopping 74 City Lights Bookstore D4 SOMA Cartoon Art Museum MUSEUM Offline map Google map ( 415-227-8666; www.cartoonart.org; 655 Mission St; adult/child $7/5; 11am-5pm Tue-Sun) Comics earn serious consideration with shows of original Watchmen covers, too-hot-to-print political cartoons and lectures with local Pixar studio heads.

pages: 677 words: 206,548

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
by Marc Goodman
Published 24 Feb 2015

But your car or phone’s navigation is actually the least critical network disrupted by the jammer. As we saw in the San Diego incident, though not immediately obvious, cell-phone towers, power grids, air traffic control, and ATMs also depend on GPS-embedded systems to function properly. When local truck drivers go off the grid, they are taking many other people and services with them, and hundreds of incidents of collateral damage have been reported annually. For example, in London, for ten minutes a day, traders were discovering that their trades were not going through because there was a problem with the time-stamping mechanism in the system.

…

Of course it matters to us, those who suffer the economic and social harms from these leaked data. For those who prefer the benefits of the “free” system, let them enjoy it and all it entails. But why not allow the rest of us the option to pay to maintain greater control over our privacy and security? While it may be impossible to “live off the grid” in today’s modern world, we can by all means design a system that is much more protective. There are better, more balanced examples out there, such as the EU’s Data Protection Directive, which is much more consumer-friendly and enshrines privacy as a fundamental right of all EU citizens. It limits what data companies can store about us and how long they can keep it before the data must be deleted.

Bali & Lombok Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

King-size beds and separate dressing areas and terraces primed for meals make for good retreats. There are Mediterranean accents throughout including on the restaurant's menu. Aas Once you've reached Aas, hole up for a spell and give your behind a rest. oMeditasiGUESTHOUSE ( GOOGLE MAP ; %0828 372 2738; www.meditasibungalows.blogspot.com; Aas; r 300,000-500,000Rp) Get off the grid and take a respite from the pressures of life at this chilled-out and charming hideaway. Meditation and yoga help you relax, and the eight rooms are close to good swimming and snorkelling. Open-air baths allow you to count the colours of the bougainvillea and frangipani that grow in profusion. 5Eating & Drinking As noted, most places to stay have cafes.

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Bali BrioBOAT ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %0828 9710 2336; Sama Sama Bungalows; h9am-9pm) Blue Water ExpressBOAT ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; h9am-9pm) Gili CatBOAT ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %0361-271680; www.gilicat.com; h9am-9pm) PeramaBOATS ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %0370 638 514; www.peramatour.com; h9am-8pm) Scoot Gili Meno %0370 Gili Meno is the smallest of the three islands and the perfect setting for your desert-island fantasy. Even in high season Meno still feels right off the grid. Most accommodation is strung out along the east coast, near the most picturesque beach. Inland you'll find scattered homesteads, coconut plantations and a salty lake. Some lonely stretches of the west coast can feel scrubby and even desolate, yet they evoke a mood all their own. Gili Meno 1Sights 1Turtle SanctuaryC3 2Activities, Courses & Tours 2Blue Marlin Dive CentreC2 3Divine DiversB1 4Gili Meno DiversC3 5Mao MenoC3 4Sleeping 6Adeng AdengB1 7Ana BungalowC1 Diana CaféB2 8Jepun BungalowsC2 9Kebun Kupu KupuB2 10MahamayaB1 11Mallias BungalowsC3 12Paul's Last ResortC1 13Tao KomboC3 14Tropicana HideawayC2 15Villa NautilusC3 5Eating Adeng AdengB1 16Rust WarungC2 17Webe CaféB1 18Ya Ya WarungC2 19Zoraya CafeC2 6Drinking & Nightlife 20Diana CaféB2 7Shopping 21Art Shop BotolC3 rBeaches Ringed by sand, Gili Meno has one of the best strips of beach in the Gilis at its southeast corner.

pages: 369 words: 80,355

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
by David Weinberger
Published 14 Jul 2011

Each decision has a history, expresses multiple local interests, and is absorbed by the organization that makes the decision its own. As old-style hierarchical decisions increasingly occur within enterprises enmeshed in the Net, those decisions are taking on some of the network’s properties, even if the decision-makers don’t explicitly recognize it. The CEO of General Electric could be entirely off the grid, but still GE’s engineers, product managers, and marketing folks are out on the Net, exploring and trying out the ideas that affect their branch of the larger decision tree. After the decision, they will engage with the network to get feedback that may affect the execution of the decision. The organization’s appropriation of the decision—the way it makes the decision its own—will be accomplished over its network, and will be visible on the network, including inevitably and to some degree on the vast public network.

pages: 273 words: 83,186

The botany of desire: a plant's-eye view of the world
by Michael Pollan
Published 27 May 2002

Maybe at some level we’re still in touch with the power of the old gardens. Also, one of the attractions of gardening is the independence it can confer—from the greengrocer, the florist, the pharmacist, and, for some, the drug dealer. One does not have to go all the way “back to the land” to experience the satisfaction of providing for yourself off the grid of the national economy. So, yes, I was curious to see if I could grow some “really amazing Maui” in my Connecticut garden. It seemed to me this would indeed represent a particularly impressive sort of alchemy. But as things turned out, my experiment in growing marijuana was of a piece with my experience smoking it, paranoid and stupid being the operative terms

pages: 270 words: 85,450

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
by Atul Gawande
Published 6 Oct 2014

He entered local practice but soon focused on emergency medicine because it offered predictable hours, on a shift, letting him devote the rest of his time to his farm. He was committed to the idea of homesteading—being totally self-reliant. He built his home by hand with friends. He grew most of his own food. He used wind and solar power to generate electricity. He was completely off the grid. He lived by the weather and the seasons. Eventually, he and Jude, a nurse who became his wife, expanded the farm to more than four hundred acres. They had cattle, draft horses, chickens, a root cellar, a sawmill, and a sugarhouse, not to mention five children. “I really felt that the life I was living was the most authentically true life I could live,” Thomas explained.

pages: 322 words: 84,752

Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up
by Philip N. Howard
Published 27 Apr 2015

Vast amounts of video, photo, and text content culled from the web placed the international pariah within 125 miles of Abbottabad—a process that civilians could replicate.36 The relative absence of mobile-phone pings to network towers drew attention to a particular compound—it was a large home that was noticeably off the grid. Drones and satellites gave analysts the aerial view.37 And high-risk ground observations raised more evidence. “Big data” refers to information about many people collected over many kinds of devices, and big data helped find a major international pariah. U.S. Navy SEAL assault rifles were the proximate cause of bin Laden’s death, and those military personnel took on very real risks.

pages: 263 words: 81,542

Drinking in America: Our Secret History
by Susan Cheever
Published 12 Oct 2015

The West was a place where no one cared who you were or who you had been; they only cared what you could accomplish. The effect of these men, who were able to roam the West and discover mountain passes and pathways and navigable rivers that would later make the great migration possible, is hard to estimate. They chose their lives because of solitude and other benefits of living off the grid. Their year was measured by a single social event, an annual drunken blowout called the rendezvous. In these wild, commercial, and social gatherings, first arranged by the eastern fur companies to centralize the trade of furs, men who lived and hunted alone for eleven months were thrown together with the money, whiskey, and tobacco they received for the furs they had trapped during the year—there was little stable currency west of the Mississippi.

pages: 294 words: 80,084

Tomorrowland: Our Journey From Science Fiction to Science Fact
by Steven Kotler
Published 11 May 2015

He helped his wife deliver six of his eight children at home, without a physician or midwife. Jens dismisses the whole hospital birthing process as rapacious big business. Starting from scratch and without the aid of sight, Jens designed and built a solar-and wind-powered house and pulled his family off the grid. In his spare hours, he programs computers, tunes pianos, and gives the occasional concert. For a blind man to give a classical recital requires memorizing whole scores — a process that can take nearly five years. To cover his surgery, Jens gave quite a few recitals. 5. Back in the lab, I’m still supporting Jens’s weight.

pages: 270 words: 79,992

The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath
by Nicco Mele
Published 14 Apr 2013

Overnight, this printer (using a technology that already exists) will have sprayed plastic into the shape provided by the shoe design blueprints. You will wake up, get dressed, open the 3-D printer (shaped almost like an oven) and take out your new shoes. Your house will draw its electric power from a shared neighborhood renewable—wind and solar—power station, which you will have built with the help of a site like One Block Off the Grid (you can sign your neighborhood up now at 1bog.org). Your car will be an electric one that charges up at night in your garage, designed and manufactured not at a Michigan factory run by one of the Big Three automakers but in a nearby town; thanks to advances in small-run fabrication and manufacturing, there will soon be thousands and thousands of car companies, producing vehicles customized for every locale.

pages: 269 words: 83,307

Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits
by Kevin Roose
Published 18 Feb 2014

The trip had been made possible by a rule at Credit Suisse that required all employees to take a mandatory weeklong vacation every year. (Later, it was extended to two weeks.) The policy, known as “block leave,” had been instituted not to give burned-out employees a week away from the grind, but to catch traders who were engaged in irresponsible or illegal activity. By making all employees at the bank go off the grid for a week every year, the logic went, supervisors and compliance officers would have time to comb through their trading logs and computer for evidence of suspicious activity. The necessity of block leave had been hammered home by Jérôme Kerviel, the convicted rogue trader who lost more than $6 billion for French bank Société Générale and later told officials that the fact that he hadn’t taken any vacation days in 2007 “should have alerted the management” that something was wrong with his books.

pages: 267 words: 85,265

That Wild Country: An Epic Journey Through the Past, Present, and Future of America's Public Lands
by Mark Kenyon
Published 2 Dec 2019

The original plan had been for Kylie to join me in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, but she recently decided she wasn’t up for it. The two of us had already been in Montana for several weeks camping and working remotely again, me writing pieces for outdoor publications and podcasting, while she continued her career services job for Michigan State University. But this trip would have taken us both off the grid, unable to keep one foot in our respective careers, and Kylie had some pressing projects to attend to. I’d called Andy as soon as Kylie dropped out, offering up the last-minute opening, and one week later here he was, ready and raring to go. His flexible schedule as a bricklayer and his up-for-anything personality made him an ideal stand-in.

pages: 288 words: 83,690

How to Kill a City: The Real Story of Gentrification
by Peter Moskowitz
Published 7 Mar 2017

The year prior, UNESCO dubbed Detroit a “City of Design,” and launched a campaign with local branding firms and business groups to showcase Detroit’s “commitment to the creative sector around the globe.” Urban planners and other Florida followers seem to believe Detroit proves that attracting the creative class works. All you have to do is ignore the rest of the city and its (mostly black) residents, who keep slipping further and further off the grid. To his credit, Florida essentially admits this problem in his book: “One problematic consequence [of the rise of the creative class] is the accelerated sorting of people and cities into an economic hierarchy. Our society is not just becoming more unequal, its inequities are being etched into our economic geography.… The new geography of class might be giving rise to a new form of segregation—different from racial segregation or the old schism between central city and suburb, and perhaps even more threatening to national unity.”

pages: 234 words: 84,737

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life
by Samantha Irby
Published 14 Apr 2017

I’m not trying to live to sixty-five, are you nuts? Technically, I can afford it. I make good money, and I don’t have any debt, because I’ve never owned shit and I dropped out of college. I pay for everything in cash because I don’t understand APRs, and my credit file was so thin from so many years of living off the grid that when I finally got around to applying for a Discover card, Experian thought I might be dead. Will my yawning internal pit of desire ever be full? Is there any amount of cash that’s enough to fully satiate this ravenous beast?! I don’t know, man. Will Céline keep making dope-ass sunglasses every season?

pages: 327 words: 84,627

The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth
by Jeremy Rifkin
Published 9 Sep 2019

In its thirteenth Five-Year Plan, which commenced in 2016, China also turned inward, with the massive production, sale, and installation of cheap solar and wind technology in the domestic market.30 The new focus on installing and harvesting solar and wind energy inside China coincided with the digital upgrading of China’s electricity grid, enabling Chinese businesses and communities to generate their own near-zero marginal cost renewable energy and use it off the grid or sell it back to the grid. Is it possible that the energy companies and power and electric utility companies and, for that matter, countries around the world are oblivious to the Great Disruption that has unfolded in the European Union and the People’s Republic of China? Doubtful! I regularly meet with energy companies and power and electricity companies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

pages: 290 words: 82,220

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age
by Annalee Newitz
Published 2 Feb 2021

With so many people flocking to our modern-day versions of Cahokia, cities seem inevitable—but they aren’t. After abandoning our future cities, some people may return to small-town life, like the people of Angkor and Çatalhöyük did. Often, farming is at the center of these kinds of communities, so we might see villagers of tomorrow eating locally, fueling their agricultural work by setting up off-the-grid power sources. There’s another possibility, too. There were many people who left Cahokia and Çatalhöyük to become seminomadic. Post-urban people of the 21st and 22nd centuries might become nomads, living in their cars or other vehicles, forming caravans for safety. Earth may become a planet full of tiny human settlements, with cities being the exception rather than the rule.

pages: 308 words: 82,290

Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper
by Geoffrey Gray
Published 8 Aug 2011

An exodus is under way. A new billboard is up: “Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn off the lights?” Outside the city, in old logging towns, the government is collecting on back taxes. Auditors snake through the maze of country roads in rural Washington where many loggers and their families are living off the grid. The tax bills are higher than what many homes are worth. Laborers are forced to move, forced to sell. Locals vow to get back at the government for stealing their homes. The hijacker wants to know what time it is. After five, Tina tells him. Five was his deadline. What are the feds trying to do?

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything
by Kelly Weill
Published 22 Feb 2022

Just as the newspaper boom in Samuel Rowbotham’s time and the rise of radio in Voliva’s enabled the spread of the Flat Earth sentiment, the sudden surge in available information online gave rise to a rich conspiracy culture. The end of the Johnsons’ lives overlapped briefly with the beginning of mass internet use. But with their love of self-published newsletters and off-the-grid living, the Johnsons were resolutely off-line. A Flat Earth email newsletter—or, God forbid, an internet discussion forum—was out of the question for them. Their Flat Earth Society membership registry, printed out and stored in their home until their catastrophic house fire, was one of the last social networks that could go up in flames.

pages: 287 words: 85,518

Please Report Your Bug Here: A Novel
by Josh Riedel
Published 17 Jan 2023

In a video chat, my sister walked me around her in-laws’ strangely manicured lawn in Scottsdale: fake grass, a fake waterfall in the pool, and one real saguaro that only reminded me of how many other saguaros must have been chopped down. Photos showed the Founder at a ski resort in Wyoming, with a woman who might have been his sister (hard to tell with ski goggles). Tanni was off the grid, rock climbing in the High Sierra. Allie invited me to her aunt’s house in Marin, a gorgeous treehouse-like structure made of redwood and perched on Mount Tam. I went, but the socializing was in large groups of distant family members and family friends, so no one said anything interesting. I consumed multiple glasses of expensive wine to convince myself the outing was worthwhile.

pages: 361 words: 86,921

The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (And Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor
by Andy Kessler
Published 12 Oct 2009

If we can find it early enough, we can eradicate it.” Chapter 8 Blood Tests It was time to see if those Egg Beaters were doing their job. Was my cholesterol dropping? Good up, bad down? I sure as hell wasn’t going to drop another couple of hundred bucks with Dr. Greedy. No way—I was off the grid and planned on doing this myself. So I shopped for a cholesterol test kit at Walgreen’s. No dice. All you get is one number for overall cholesterol. Nothing about LDLs or HDLs or MDLs (more damn lies). Surely something exists out there away from doctors. I did some more digging to figure out the ins and outs of blood tests.

pages: 669 words: 210,153

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 6 Dec 2016

#12—What might I put in place to allow me to go off the grid for 4 to 8 weeks, with no phone or email? * * * Though wordy, I have asked variations of this question many times since 2004. It used to end with, “. . . allow me to go on vacation for 4 to 8 weeks,” but that’s no longer enough. Given the spread of broadband, it’s extremely easy to take a “vacation” to Brazil or Japan and still work nonstop on your business via laptop. This kind of subtle self-deception is a time bomb. For the last 5 years, I’ve asked myself, in effect, “What can I put in place so that I can go completely off the grid for 4 to 8 weeks?”

pages: 304 words: 87,702

The 100 Best Vacations to Enrich Your Life
by Pam Grout
Published 14 May 2007

The educational trips, led by archaeologists and including visits to museums and ancient cliff dwellings, backcountry hikes, and excavations, range from $1,295 to $1,995. HOW TO GET IN TOUCH Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, 23390 Road K, Cortez, CO 81321, 800-422-8975, www.crowcanyon.org. TURTLE ISLAND PRESERVE live off the grid TRIPLETT, NORTH CAROLINA When we leave the world of the 21st century and step back to a place where we make fire by spinning sticks, and drink from mountain springs, and tell stories by firelight, we get a new reality. —T. G. Pelham, teacher at Turtle Island 69 | What if you could learn to live life on your own terms?

pages: 340 words: 91,387

Stealth of Nations
by Robert Neuwirth
Published 18 Oct 2011

She worked from home, with no license, no food preparation certificate, no permits (she insists, however, that cake decorating never really was a business because the price she could charge per cake could never pay for the time necessary to make her funky designs and so she wound up working mostly for friends). Still, for the past two years she has essentially run her entire life in the economic shadows. “I’m totally off the grid,” she said. “It was never an option to do it any other way. It never even crossed my mind. It was financially absolutely impossible. I just found a way to do it that would work.” Brandon Arnovick, too, stumbled into System D. A musician in San Francisco—part of what might be called the alt-hip-hop scene—he was looking for a job that would allow him to spend more time at home with his kid.

pages: 282 words: 92,998

Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It
by Richard A. Clarke and Robert Knake
Published 15 Dec 2010

The best example, however, of how computer commands can cause things to destroy themselves may be electric generators. Generators make electricity by spinning, and the number of times they spin per minute creates power in units expressed in a measurement called Hertz. In the United States and Canada, the generators on most subgrids spin at 60 Megahertz. When a generator is started, it is kept off the grid until it gets up to 60 MHz. If it is connected to the grid at another speed, or if its speed changes very much while on the grid, the power from all of the other generators on the grid spinning at 60 MHz will flow into the slower generator, possibly ripping off its turbine blades. To test whether a cyber warrior could destroy a generator, a federal government lab in Idaho set up a standard control network and hooked it up to a generator.

pages: 375 words: 88,306

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism
by Arun Sundararajan
Published 12 May 2016

As Burnham further clarifies about OpenBazaar in his blog post, “There is no way for a central authority to leverage network effect market power to extract rents from the participants.”5 At a time when most venture capitalists seem to be plowing money into sharing economy platforms that are able to do precisely what Burnham claimed OpenBazaar made impossible (i.e., “leverage network effect market power to extract rents from the participants”), why would a visible and successful venture capitalist like USV want to invest in a company aimed at furthering a technology that is not only, in a sense, “off the grid,” but is also open-source and committed to “zero fees.” Burnham explains further: This begs the question of how OB1 can be a for profit business that will generate a return on the investment we are announcing today. How can a business that is consciously architected to undo network effect defensibility, one that is tearing down the walls and filling in the moats that every paper on market based competition has insisted are necessary for success … succeed.

pages: 407 words: 90,238

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work
by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal
Published 21 Feb 2017

The organization did everything from restore a Vietnamese temple in Biloxi to raze and rebuild the entire town of Pearlington. As CNET noted: “This was no ragtag group of 10 to 20 hopeless do-gooders showing up without a plan. This was more than 150 people, toting heavy equipment, supplies of food and water, [and] years of experience surviving and thriving in harsh, off-the-grid environments.” Before leaving, they teamed up with local residents to build a giant sculpture out of flood debris and, true to form, turned it to ash in a giant, cathartic bonfire. “Our town was destroyed and we were abandoned by our government and our leadership,” one Pearlington resident said, “but [Burners without Borders] came in and reminded us that even in all that devastation was the chance for art, for celebration and for community.”

pages: 313 words: 92,907

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are Thekeys to Sustainability
by David Owen
Published 16 Sep 2009

Henry David Thoreau, who lived in a cabin in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, between 1845 and 1847, established an image, still potent today, of the sensitive nature lover living simply, and in harmony with the environment, beyond the edge of civilization. Thoreau wasn’t actually much of an outdoorsman, and his cabin was closer to the center of Concord than to any true wilderness, but for many Americans he remains the archetype—the natural philosopher guiltlessly living off the grid. John Muir, who was born twenty years after Thoreau and founded the Sierra Club in 1892, viewed city living as toxic to both body and soul. 20 The National Park Service, established by Congress in 1916, was conceived as an increasingly necessary corrective to urban life, and national parks were treated in large measure as sanctuaries from urban depravity.

pages: 326 words: 94,046

The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician's First Year
by Matt McCarthy
Published 6 Apr 2015

Hours later, after the last patient had been seen, Jim went behind the counter of the soup kitchen and loaded up two dozen Styrofoam containers with chicken noodle soup. From there, I tagged along as he hopped in a van and began seeking out Boston’s homeless who, in Jim’s words, were “temporarily off the grid.” Our driver, a Haitian man named Pierre, followed his normal route, stopping at ATM branches, abandoned subway stops, and indeterminate New England wastelands searching for people who might appreciate a warm meal, a pair of socks, or their blood pressure medication. We were seeking out the people I actively avoided in everyday life, the ones wearing rags who hadn’t bathed in months.

pages: 347 words: 86,274

The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion
by Virginia Postrel
Published 5 Nov 2013

Always a component of glamour, grace can also be an object of it. iStockphoto The yearning for grace creates two broad categories of glamour, representing two versions of escape and transformation. Autonomy portrays life without dependence, while synchronization draws on the grace of perfect coordination. Autonomy includes the glamour of “living off the grid,” hitting the open road, or sailing off into the sunset, without responsibilities, entanglements, or refueling. It spurs purchases of off-road vehicles by people who drive them to the office and supermarket. It stokes survivalist fantasies. In a long-running advertising campaign, Corona beer has used the glamour of autonomy to present an enticingly tranquil contrast to more-raucous beer promotions.

pages: 255 words: 88,987

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
by Chris Hadfield
Published 29 Oct 2013

Turning off my little light, I was perfectly at ease in this otherworldly place, knowing that in Houston and Korolev, people in Mission Control were keeping watch as we spun through the sky and into sleep, on our journey around and around the world. Although the ISS is all about cutting-edge technology, living there is in some respects the ultimate off-the-grid experience. It’s remote all right, and there’s no running water—without gravity, it would cohere into blobs, float away and wreck the sophisticated equipment that keeps the Station going. The rough-and-ready, improvisational quality to life on board is reminiscent of a long trip in a sailboat: privacy and fresh produce are in short supply, hygiene is basic, and a fair amount of the crew’s time is spent just on maintaining and repairing the craft.

pages: 327 words: 88,121

The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community
by Marc J. Dunkelman
Published 3 Aug 2014

Rice, “Configurations of Relationships in Different Media,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12, no. 4 (2007): 1183–1207. 4Amazing stories today tell how mobile phones are changing the developing world, connecting farmers to markets and making crucial information accessible to individuals who would otherwise be off the grid. In the United States, however, the patterns of use are strikingly different. 5Alan Ehrenhalt, The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 258. 6Between 1973 and 1994, the General Social Survey surveyed Americans, asking what they most preferred in a job: high income, no danger of being fired, chances for advancement, short working hours, or a feeling of accomplishment.

pages: 287 words: 86,870

The Glass Hotel
by Emily St. John Mandel
Published 14 Jun 2020

“We may or may not have heard an unsettling anecdote,” Saparelli said softly. “An unsettling anecdote that proves nothing. The facts of the case are unchanged. The fact remains that we’ll never know what happened, because no one else was there.” “Geoffrey Bell was there.” “Geoffrey Bell disappeared at Rotterdam. Geoffrey Bell is off the grid.” “It doesn’t seem suspicious to you that he walked off the ship at the first stop after she…?” “I have no way of knowing why he walked off the ship, Leon, and we both know no police force is ever going to interview him about it. Look at it this way,” Saparelli said. “No matter what I write in my report, Vincent Smith will still be dead.

EcoVillage at Ithaca Pioneering a Sustainable Culture (2005)
by Liz Walker
Published 20 May 2005

And if we — with all our quirky personalities, diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, and varied spiritual traditions — can practice loving-kindness, then I have great hope for the world. C H A P T E R 7 THE “ECO” IN ECOVILLAGE “Hi, welcome to EcoVillage at Ithaca,” I say, enjoying the opportunity to show off our project to a group of architecture students. “Is that a solar panel on the roof?” asks one. “I assume you’re off the grid.” “No,” I admit. “Well, do you have composting toilets?” “No, we’re required by the Town to hook up to city water and city sewer.” “Well,” comes the challenge I’ve gotten used to, “then what makes you so ecological, anyway?” I wrote that vignette, a composite of many personal experiences, when FROG was completed but SONG was not yet built.

pages: 335 words: 94,578

Spectrum Women: Walking to the Beat of Autism
by Barb Cook and Samantha Craft
Published 20 Aug 2018

Unfortunately, the modern human is a social animal which does not have much success outside of our interdependent, industrialized world. As a result, we end up having to do a lot of communicating and a fair amount of socializing. In fact, social communication is essential unless you manage somehow to live simultaneously all alone and off the grid. Then you only have to communicate with yourself. Easier? Not necessarily. But let’s not jump ahead. The communication challenges of the spectrum don’t end there. Have you ever looked up how to be an effective communicator? Granted, the information differs depending on whether you read Business Week or Buzzfeed but, regardless, there are some common themes.

pages: 265 words: 93,354

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays
by Phoebe Robinson
Published 14 Oct 2021

Having them watch my boring little life is better than me pulling a Henry David Thoreau, who, at twenty-eight, moved to Walden Pond in Massachusetts (never heard of it) and built a cabin with his bare-ass hands (my ancestors built the White House, so I feel like I’m exempt from ever having to do anything architectural for as long as I live). Anyway, he did all of this because, as he wrote, he “wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life” and being off the grid allowed him to do that. No. Fucking. Thanks. I’m into living sha-ha-sha-la-la-la-lowly on the grid with the modern-day comforts of Face ID and Gravity Blankets because life is not actually a delicious marrow, but a lukewarm Fear Factor smoothie that’s comprised of wheatgrass, insects, and a splash of lemon.

pages: 279 words: 90,278

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
by Sarah Smarsh
Published 17 Sep 2018

Plus, there was more work in Wichita than in the country. Somewhere along the way of America, people moved from farms to cities until the nation was a more urban place than a rural one. My father’s family had held out and held on for generations, though, preferring air to asphalt and lightning bugs to streetlamps. Or maybe they were just so far off the grid that they didn’t know any other life for comparison. What took Dad out of the country wasn’t a siren song enticing him with excitement, culture, and opportunity, but something more like a tornado siren saying that if you want to survive your ass had better move. If I live to be an old woman and the trends of my early life continue, by the time I die half the Kansas population will live in only five of a hundred and five counties—people consolidated like seed companies.

pages: 317 words: 98,745

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace
by Ronald J. Deibert
Published 13 May 2013

The amount of digital information now doubles every year, and the “information superhighway” might be best described as continuous exponential growth, more on-ramps, more data, all the time, faster, more immediate, more accessible, its users always on, always connected. This speed and volume make getting a handle on the big picture difficult, and the truth is – a hideous truth, especially for those of you who think of yourselves as “off the grid,” somehow away from the connected world, and proudly disconnected – is that no one is immune. Let’s imagine for a moment that you don’t own a computer, have never sent an email or text, and don’t know what “app” means. The thing that informs you, that prepares you for cocktail parties and other gatherings, is mainstream or “old” media – newspapers, radio, and TV.

pages: 362 words: 87,462

Laziness Does Not Exist
by Devon Price
Published 5 Jan 2021

Social media apps have created intense pressure to mine every life experience for achievement points—turning joy into clout. Nearly every activity in our lives has become something to document, measure, and broadcast our success in, despite the fact that a mountain of evidence suggests such obsessive recording and sharing can impair or erode our mental health. Most of us won’t be able to completely go off the grid. Even if we fantasize about chucking our phones out the window, many of us need digital tools to stay organized and connected. But that doesn’t mean we have to be fully invested in gamifying our lives. Like Joan, we can work to set reasonable, practical boundaries on how we interact with the digital realm.

pages: 304 words: 90,084

Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change
by Dieter Helm
Published 2 Sep 2020

Gas is better than oil, but net zero and gas do not mix except at the margin and only with large-scale sequestration. The hydrogen-from-electricity route may be expensive relative to using electricity directly in batteries, but there are some intriguing and special circumstances where the costs are very different. Imagine a remote location off the grid – say northern Norway which has a lot of wind potential, or the remote Canadian mountain areas with lots of hydro potential but far fewer markets in close proximity. Rather than building transmission networks for the electricity that could be produced in these remote locations, and bearing in mind the losses from long-distance transmission, might it not be better to turn that renewable energy into hydrogen, possibly via ammonia (and separately, to use this process to create low-carbon fertilisers too)?

pages: 328 words: 90,677

Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors
by Edward Niedermeyer
Published 14 Sep 2019

Once he noticed it, he started to see it in nearly every picture of a wrecked Tesla he could find. Eventually he started an album on the photo-sharing site Flickr, dubbing the collection “whompy wheels.” Thus a one-man crusade was born. Leech says he hadn’t set out to look for safety problems with Teslas. Several years earlier, when he’d been building a solar panel system for his off-the-grid home in the Australian bush, he discovered something called the “SunCube” on the internet. The SunCube’s creator promised it would revolutionize solar energy generation, and at first Leech was taken in, but as time went on, it became clear that there was no actual product. In the online confrontations that followed, the SunCube’s inventor called Leech a fraud and a criminal; Leech sued him for defamation and won.

pages: 829 words: 229,566

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
by Naomi Klein
Published 15 Sep 2014

And this is a very real concern: in the U.S., the deluge of cheap natural gas thanks to fracking has already hurt the country’s wind market, with wind power’s share of the new electricity coming online plummeting from at least 42 percent in 2009 to 25 percent in 2010 and 32 percent in 2011—the key years that fracking skyrocketed.13 Moreover, once the “bridge” to a renewable future has been built, there would have to be a way to phase out gas extraction completely, since it is a major emitter of greenhouse gases. There are various ways to design a system that would meet these specific goals. Governments could mandate “combined-cycle” plants that are better at ramping up and down to support wind and solar when available, for example, and they could firmly link any new gas plants to coal plants taken off the grid. Also crucial, says the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Ben Parfitt, an expert on fracking impacts, would be “regulations in place at the state and the national levels that made the link between where the gas is being produced and how it is being produced, and the ultimate production of the power,” meaning that power plants could only source gas that was proven to have lower life-cycle emissions than coal.14 And that could well rule out fracked gas completely.

…

Al Lameman had aged considerably in recent years and slipped in and out of the conversation. Anderson, almost painfully shy, had also struggled with her health. The spot where the family met for this gathering was where she spent the summer months: a small trailer in a clearing in the woods, without running water or electricity, entirely off the grid. I knew the Beaver Lake Cree were in a David and Goliath struggle. But on that endless summer evening, I suddenly understood what this actually meant: some of the most marginalized people in my country—many of them, like all the senior members of the Lameman clan, survivors of the intergenerational trauma of abusive residential schools—are taking on some of the wealthiest and most powerful forces on the planet.

pages: 342 words: 95,013

The Zenith Angle
by Bruce Sterling
Published 27 Apr 2004

Mountain people always lived free. The nooks and crannies of the Rocky Mountains had Space Force generals, and ancient hippies, and silver miners, and jack Mormons. “Out here in God’s country, we got ourselves some dropouts!” crowed Hickok, drunkenly pounding his leg with his rocklike fist. “The real off-the-grid people! Polygamists. Unabomber types. And there’s survivalists!” During the Y2K panics of 1999, Van had come to know quite a lot about survivalists. And what he knew, Van didn’t like. Survivalists were people of bad faith. Their faith was that civilization would break down, and ought to break down, and deserved to break down.

pages: 307 words: 102,734

The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River
by Dan Morrison
Published 11 Aug 2010

Landy was talking about how he got his name (he drove the company Land Rover), about the time Prince William had come with a few friends to shoot the rapids (“A very fine man; he treats everyone equally), and about possible repercussions of the Bujagali Dam (“Frankly, we may be screwed”), when Schon looked at his watch and said, “Damn. We’re even ahead of schedule.” I smiled, content. The Nile waited to carry us north from its source, off the grid and into freedom. A heartbeat later the Isuzu started sputtering and knocking, and Landy cut the engine and pulled over. He pulled a lever and tipped the cab forward to reveal the engine underneath. We had broken an injector bolt. Our ride was over. We waited by the side of the road while Landy hitched a ride back to Jinja on a passing motorcycle.

The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future
by Michael Levi
Published 28 Apr 2013

The reality remains that no zero-carbon electricity source—renewable energy, coal or gas with CCS, or nuclear—is 174 • THE POWER SURGE ready to replace traditional fossil-fuel-fired electricity across the United States without incurring large costs and confronting big unknowns. m m m For many who care about the environment, though, the fixation on carbon emissions itself appears to be misguided. Laura Israel, a documentary filmmaker, took time to come to this conclusion when wind developers moved into the small New York town where she had spent her weekends for twenty years. “I have a little log cabin in the woods,” she told me; “I just go there to look at stars. It’s practically off the grid anyway. So when I heard about wind turbines, I thought great! It would be perfect.” But there was controversy brewing in the town. Neighbors were fighting with the wind companies over leases. They were also fighting with each other over whether the massive turbines belonged so close to people’s homes.

pages: 360 words: 101,038

The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter
by David Sax
Published 8 Nov 2016

But they also appreciated that analog had a valuable place in a life dominated by digital interactions, and they made a conscious place for it, at camp and at home. This held true for nearly everyone I spoke with for this book, from record store owners to workers at high-tech companies. No one, including myself, advocated a return to the predigital lives we once knew. No one was flinging their phones into lakes, or exclusively living off the grid. An entirely analog existence was unattainable and unattractive, but so was an exclusively digital one. What was ideal, and what lay behind the Revenge of Analog, was striking a balance between the two. I wanted to speak with some of the Seeker campers whose phones had been confiscated two weeks prior, and I was led to one of the furthest cabins in camp.

pages: 308 words: 98,729

Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash
by Elizabeth Royte
Published 1 Jan 2005

I’ve always been fond of the Clivus Multrum, a waterless composting toilet in which solid waste, mixed with sawdust, is reduced by microorganisms to 10 percent of its original volume. A tiny battery- or solar-powered fan directs any bad smells out a roof stack. The end product is an odorless humus, perfectly safe to use on home gardens. I wasn’t quite ready to dismantle my toilet, though thousands are moving in this direction. More and more people, living off the grid or not, have recognized how little sense it makes, when our population is so large and our clean water supply shrinking, to dilute our solids with water and then, at great expense, separate the two. The more I learned about the potential value of things that we call waste—and the more I was dealing with my waste instead of sending it out of sight—the more blurred the lines became, in my mind, between sewage and garbage, sewage and compost, and garbage and compost.

pages: 344 words: 96,690

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
Published 23 May 2011

You drop a link in your blog and, to supercharge things, ask your pal Manny down in community relations to put a link to your post out on SuperShoe, the private community of shoe fanatics your company runs. Before lunchtime you go to your internal wiki to add a quick note that ties together the files and activities from the morning that have already been uploaded and logged, so that manufacturing and retail relations know what you’re up to. Lunchtime. Time to drop off the grid. You turn your phone on private so that it stops tracking you and buy a gift for your honey’s birthday in the shop around the corner. The groundswell can wait a moment. You grab a sandwich, and it’s back to work. By afternoon the word is back. Of the 191 comments on your blog, 75 percent are positive, and they’re going nuts over Helena’s stilettos—ShoeTube already shows nine other videos of Helena wannabes strutting their stuff.

pages: 339 words: 99,674

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War
by James Risen
Published 15 Feb 2014

The CIA’s Science and Technology Directorate, which had largely been stuck on the sidelines of the war on terror, saw in Dennis Montgomery an opportunity to get in the game. The directorate had played an important role in the Cold War, but in the first few years of the war on terror, it was still struggling to determine how technology could be leveraged against small groups of terrorists who were trying to stay off the grid. Montgomery brilliantly played on the CIA’s technical insecurities as well as the agency’s woeful lack of understanding about al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism. He was able to convince the CIA that he had developed a secret new technology that enabled him to decipher al Qaeda codes embedded in the network banner displayed on the broadcasts of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network.

pages: 326 words: 103,170

The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks
by Joshua Cooper Ramo
Published 16 May 2016

You’re not as complex as the average of what you’re connected to. You’re as complex as the most complex device you’re linked to. It’s like that old wartime cargo ship lemma, the one the U-boat commanders would feast on: You can only go as fast as the slowest ship in the convoy. You or I might have the simplest possible life—living retired with no computer off the grid. But our investments? They are likely tied to the markets, which are stuffed with dimly understood complexities. Of course this creates important new opportunities and demands—firms that really level the playing field, that let us manage those risks as well and as fairly as the largest of investors.

pages: 441 words: 96,534

Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution
by Janette Sadik-Khan
Published 8 Mar 2016

They may ultimately be part of Mexico City’s long-term salvation—and the salvation of all cities. • • • A problem in many cities is finding your way around. Plazas give pedestrians new destinations, but without a system of signs indicating where they are, neighborhood landmarks like these can easily remain off the grid. While streets are cluttered with street name signs, one-way signs, stop signs, and totem poles of parking information, many cities don’t have so much as a sign or an arrow for people walking. But even pedestrians need infrastructure. We’ve all experienced the frustration of being lost or pointed in the wrong direction by a seemingly knowledgeable local.

Free Money for All: A Basic Income Guarantee Solution for the Twenty-First Century
by Mark Walker
Published 29 Nov 2015

Many of these dreams would not be reasonable options without BIG, as the threat of financial destitution would be too great. Another possibility would be to live a relatively simple life as advocated by Thoreau. Rural property is relatively cheap. It is possible to buy an acre for less than $1,000. It would be possible to build a house, plant a garden, install solar and wind generation of power, and live “off the grid” on BIG. A couple devoted to such a project might soon be able to bank some of their BIG money, as their monthly expenses would be quite low. BIG would enable many to be socially productive in a manner that is not often recognized by traditional market-driven values of distribution, for example, withdrawing for a time from the workforce to look after an ill parent, or to homeschool children.

pages: 365 words: 96,573

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
by James Nestor
Published 25 May 2020

The music started, a predictable mix of thumping techno with reverberating lutes and Arabic maqam yodels. What happened next was predictable, too. The business folks breathed heavily and wiggled around on their mats but mostly kept calm and to themselves. Meanwhile, the natural healers in the group went apeshit. After just a few minutes of breathing, a big man named Ben, who lived off the grid in a cabin a few miles up the mountain, sat up and stared in awe at the palms of his hands as if he were holding a magic Hobbit stone. A few more breaths and Ben began snorting and scratching his crotch. He growled and howled like a wolf, then took off around the room on all fours. The therapists running the session snuck up behind Ben and wrestled him to the floor.

pages: 343 words: 101,563

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
Published 19 Feb 2019

But for those who see the planet as being on the precipice of crisis and biblical tribulation, they also excuse a retreat from politics—indeed from climate, as fully as that might conceivably be achieved—in the name of a slippery hedonistic quietism. In other words, down to the mustache, McPherson seems like a recognizable off-the-grid figure—a kind it’s easy to find a bit suspicious. But why? We have for so long, over decades if not centuries, defined predictions of the collapse of civilization or the end of the world as something close to proof of insanity, and the communities that spring up around them as “cults,” that we are now left unable to take any warnings of disaster all that seriously—especially when those raising the alarm are also, themselves, “giving up.”

pages: 332 words: 100,601

Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations
by Nandan Nilekani
Published 4 Feb 2016

Instead of depending only on traditional modes of power generation, like coal, gas and to some extent nuclear power plants, all of which have a steady output, energy systems will also need to integrate intermittent energy produced from renewable resources such as hydroelectric power plants, wind turbines and solar panels, as well as from biofuels, geothermal, tidal and ocean thermal sources. 85 per cent of India’s rural households continue to depend on biofuels (firewood, cow dung) as their primary energy source, and these have been completely off the grid so far.7 They also bring with them a more insidious problem—the fumes generated by burning biofuels indoors can cause respiratory problems so much so that, according to the World Health Organization, India has the world’s highest rate of death due to chronic respiratory disease. In the future, some consumers could also become generators, for instance, feeding excess power generated by a solar panel back into the system.

pages: 349 words: 102,827

The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-Hackers Is Building the Next Internet With Ethereum
by Camila Russo
Published 13 Jul 2020

This technology had an actual chance of rebalancing power in favor of the individual, he thought. The very next day, he looked up the squatter’s email and asked to meet.1 The man in the video was Amir Taaki, who had recently created open source code libraries and tools for building applications on top of Bitcoin. He’s also an anarchist who lives completely off the grid, supports separatist movements, and speaks Esperanto. Amir is the guy who had led Mihai and Vitalik to the hacker community near Barcelona. He invited Gavin over to the abandoned office building in central London that had been taken over by Bitcoin people. Gavin found bare walls and empty rooms stretching across almost entire floors, all the cubicles and ugly ergonomic chairs gone, though you could still see vestiges of bland office life; gray carpets covered the floors and white acoustic tiles buffered the ceiling.

pages: 289 words: 95,046

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis
by Scott Patterson
Published 5 Jun 2023

Like Spitznagel, he’d witnessed all the blowups of the nineties—the 1994 bankruptcy of Orange County, California; the Asian Contagion of 1997 triggered by currency devaluations; the 1998 collapse of the giant hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management after it made wildly misguided bets on Russian debt (among other things). Taleb had begun calling such crises Black Swans—extreme events no one could have predicted (like a sudden market crash). Once upon a time Europeans thought all swans were white… until they discovered black swans in Australia. A Black Swan is something totally off the grid, something that defies all previously known categories and assumptions. In 1999, it was all theory. To test it, Taleb and Spitznagel launched Empirica, a hedge fund designed to reap enormous profits from crashes. They called themselves crisis hunters. It was the ultimate bear-market fund, the first of its kind.

pages: 307 words: 101,998

IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives
by Chris Stedman
Published 19 Oct 2020

Through her anonymous account, Olivia is able to be as outspoken as she used to be in other areas of her life. For her and many others, coming out to family isn’t possible, which makes having safe, low-risk spaces where she can be out—particularly digital spaces—that much more important. In this way, our digital tools can actually be a powerful way of going off the grid. We can, like Olivia, disappear into an anonymous account, stepping back from our offline life and into a space where we can freely express ourselves in invisibility. For others I interviewed, digital tools help them close a kind of distance between who they are and who they want to be. One person I spoke with took and posted nude photographs online as a way to grow more confident and reclaim their sexuality after an assault left them feeling disempowered.

Fodor's Hawaii 2012
by Fodor's Travel Publications
Published 15 Nov 2011

While Mother Nature rarely gives her itinerary in advance, if you’re lucky, a hike or boat ride may pay off with spectacular views of nature’s wonder. Sunrise and sunset makes for the best viewing opportunities. Go horseback riding in Waipi’o Valley. The Valley of the Kings owes its relative isolation and off-the-grid status to the two-thousand-foot cliffs book-ending the valley. Really, the only way to explore this sacred place is on two legs—or four. We’re partial to the horseback rides that wend deep into the rain forest to a series of waterfalls and pools—the setting for a perfect romantic getaway. Kaua‘i Tour Nāpali Coast by boat.

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. | 2 mi inland from Hwy. 19 en route to ‘Akaka Falls State Park | 96728. Fodor’s Choice | Waipi‘o Valley. Bounded by 2,000-foot cliffs, the “Valley of the Kings” was once a favorite retreat of Hawaiian royalty. Waterfalls drop 1,200 feet from the Kohala Mountains to the valley floor, and the sheer cliff faces make access difficult. Though completely off the grid today, Waipi‘o was once a center of Hawaiian life; somewhere between 4,000 and 20,000 people made it their home between the 13th and 17th centuries. To preserve this pristine part of the island, commercial transportation permits are limited—only four outfits offer organized valley trips—and Sunday the valley rests.

pages: 289 words: 112,697

The new village green: living light, living local, living large
by Stephen Morris
Published 1 Sep 2007

In our busy, consumer society, it seems that so many of us just go along with our lives without taking time to consider if what we’re doing – and how we spend our money – is in alignment with our values. I thought my family lived a pretty simple, honest life. We gardened and raised a good share of our food. We lived off-the-grid with solar power. Both adults were committed to working part time so that one of us would be home with the kids. We didn’t buy too much stuff – or so I thought. It turns out that, by examining our life by following the nine steps, we were able to achieve Financial Integrity, Financial Intelligence, and Financial Independence.

pages: 371 words: 108,317

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
by Kevin Kelly
Published 6 Jun 2016

However, the first genuine AI will not be birthed in a stand-alone supercomputer, but in the superorganism of a billion computer chips known as the net. It will be planetary in dimensions, but thin, embedded, and loosely connected. It will be hard to tell where its thoughts begin and ours end. Any device that touches this networked AI will share—and contribute to—its intelligence. A lonely off-the-grid AI cannot learn as fast, or as smartly, as one that is plugged into 7 billion human minds, plus quintillions of online transistors, plus hundreds of exabytes of real-life data, plus the self-correcting feedback loops of the entire civilization. So the network itself will cognify into something that uncannily keeps getting better.

pages: 355 words: 106,952

Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places
by Andrew Blackwell
Published 22 May 2012

This is the love-hate relationship in which we are all now engaged, and it is the basis for the entire spectrum of our individual decisions as they relate to the environment. Whether we’re talking about recycling, or voting, or consumer choices, or political agitation, or radical efforts to live off the grid, these are all attempts to square the circle, to mitigate—or, more often, to atone for—our individual role in the disquietingly unsustainable system that keeps us alive. It’s not just about living sustainably. It’s about being able to live with ourselves. As for Los Angeles, Don had his numbers wrong.

Discover Kaua'i Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Make sure you know who to call if there is a problem, as many vacation rentals have nonresident owners. » The best online sources for vacation rentals are Vacation Rentals By Owner (www.vrbo.com) and Craigslist (http://honolulu.craigslist.org/kau/). FlipKey (www.flipkey.com) contains both agency and private listings, as well as helpful reviews. » On paper, tourist accommodations on Kaua'i are only allowed in designated areas, such as Po'ipu, Princeville and Kapa'a. Local government hasn’t enforced this law, however, so there are lots of off-the-grid accommodations – and plenty of people staying at them. You don’t need to be worried about this unless there’s a crackdown. If the situation changes, government-approved rentals have a TVR (Transit Vacation Rental) number. CONDOMINIUMS » Condos are individually-owned apartments that include a kitchen(ette) and washer/dryer, and are typically more spacious than hotel rooms.

pages: 364 words: 99,897

The Industries of the Future
by Alec Ross
Published 2 Feb 2016

Today every kid has a cell phone, including my 13-year-old son. When today’s kids leave the house, they are in constant contact with parents and friends by phone and text. They’re emitting GPS signals. They’re leaving digital footprints on social media. They are little beacons of data production and consumption. If any of my three kids went off the grid in the same way that I used to, my wife and I would be frantic that something had gone wrong. We have adjusted to a reality where everyone is reachable at all times, even our children, and we expect and demand to be plugged in at all times. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing—probably a bit of both.

pages: 317 words: 107,653

A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams
by Michael Pollan
Published 15 Jan 1997

Conceivably, a building could be based entirely on such local elements, but this happens more seldom than we think: Even a structure as seemingly indigenous as a log cabin built with local timber is based on an idea and a set of techniques imported in the eighteenth century from Scandinavia. Backwoods survivalist types living “off the grid,” as they like to say, may flatter themselves about their independence, but in fact it is only the beavers and groundhogs who truly build locally, completely outside the influence of culture and history, beyond the long reach of There. And There, of course, is just another way of saying the broader culture and economy, which in our time has become international.

pages: 431 words: 107,868

The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future
by Levi Tillemann
Published 20 Jan 2015

The countryside adjacent to the provincial city of Jinan was already doing a brisk business in cheap, low-speed electric cars. They didn’t go fast, and they didn’t go far, but they could be fueled by the grid—which was more efficient and convenient than installing gas stations across rural China. And electricity off the grid was much cheaper than petroleum. In the city of Hangzhou, low-tech EVs were also on the move. A company named Kandi was deploying a vending machine–style electric car–share system. Its cars could barely top 50 mph. But in an urban setting, this was just fine and its deployment numbers were surging.

pages: 349 words: 109,304

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
by Nick Bilton
Published 15 Mar 2017

From all of his investigations, it seemed that the Silk Road was less like The Godfather and more like Lord of the Flies. Were these people capable of ruthless acts? Yes, absolutely. But with a caveat: many of them were capable only from behind the safety of a keyboard. “My advice,” he said to her, “is to just get off the grid for a while. Don’t go on social media. Don’t go to the site. Just lay low.” The people on the Silk Road would still see her online under her pseudonym, Cirrus. Only a handful of people in the federal government would know that Cirrus was really Jared, undercover. DPR had asked Cirrus to provide a driver’s license if she wanted to work for him, so Jared had the undercover team at HSI put together a fake license with a photograph of a female agent, which he sent to Dread.

pages: 431 words: 106,435

How the Post Office Created America: A History
by Winifred Gallagher
Published 7 Jan 2016

Then he rhapsodizes over a feast that was “a beaut. . . . Turkey, roast pork, sweet spuds, cranberry sauce, oyster stew, chocolate, three kinds of cake, pie, pickles, nuts and apples—how’s that for soldiers?” He allows that “there’s something about life in the wilderness that fascinates me,” but he doesn’t sugarcoat the privations of being off the grid: “Don’t suppose you will hear from me before Xmas, so I’ll wish you all a Merry one. . . . One can buy nothing here and as the troop has not been paid for two months I have no money or I would send it to you to spend with my compliments.” The Star Route system that served such wild places had many colorful contractors, but “Stagecoach” Mary Fields remains one of the most remarkable.

pages: 363 words: 109,077

The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future
by Alec Ross
Published 13 Sep 2021

The environment has been a stakeholder in Patagonia’s business model for decades. The company’s founder, American rock climber Yvon Chouinard, is an icon among outdoors enthusiasts and environmentalists. He came of age in the climbing scene that emerged in California’s Yosemite Valley in the 1950s. Chouinard and his comrades—known affectionately as “dirtbags”—lived off the grid, forgoing careers and general hygiene to spend time scaling the valley’s towering granite walls. After teaching himself to use a forge and anvil, Chouinard started fashioning handmade steel pitons (the spikes climbers drive into walls to hold their rope) and selling them to fellow climbers from the back of his car for $1.50 apiece.

Lonely Planet's Best of USA
by Lonely Planet

. (%415-621-6120; www.castrotheatre.com; 429 Castro St; adult/child $11/8.50; hshowtimes vary; mCastro) San Francisco Giants Baseball Map Google Map Watch and learn how the World Series is won – bushy beards, women’s underwear and all. (%415-972-2000; www.sfgiants.com; AT&T Park, 24 Willie Mays Plaza; tickets $5-135) A San Francisco Giants game / RON NIEBRUGGE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO © 5 EATING Off the Grid Food Truck $ Some 30 food trucks circle their wagons at SF’s largest mobile-gourmet hootenannys on Friday night at Fort Mason Center, and Sunday midday for Picnic at the Presidio and Thursday evenings for Twilight at the Presidio (both on the Main Post Lawn). Arrive early for best selection and to minimize waits.

pages: 370 words: 107,791

Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall
by Tim Mohr
Published 10 Sep 2018

This was a common Stasi tactic—leniency gave off the stench of a dirty deal, of treachery. Is Jörn an informant? The suspicion was typically enough to bust up a circle of friends. Sure enough, Jörn was ostracized from the scene immediately, a situation that did not improve when his former buddies got out of prison. Before long Jörn disappeared to Berlin, slipping off the grid and living illegally in a derelict building in Prenzlauer Berg, among the many punks who had taken up similarly tenuous, invisible lives inside the physical borders of East Germany but somehow outside the DDR. But there was another consequence of the ordeal: the gang of Weimar punks weren’t afraid anymore.

pages: 413 words: 106,479

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
by Gretchen McCulloch
Published 22 Jul 2019

Sure, a few Non Internet People still conduct their entire social lives via bodily interaction and letters and landline phone calls. Some stay offline voluntarily, like older folks whose friends and family are geographically local or still willing to take landline calls, or people who’ve decided to live off the grid or avoid social media. Others are offline involuntarily: people in remote areas, who don’t speak a language with a major internet presence, or who can’t afford a device and a connection. And technically speaking, only about half of the world’s population has access to the internet. But a whole lot of people—four billion in the latest count—are online.

pages: 407 words: 104,622

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution
by Gregory Zuckerman
Published 5 Nov 2019

The Mercers had broken with Bannon soon after he was quoted making a critical comment about Trump’s family, leaving the Mercers without a political consigliere. In the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, Mercer made just under $6 million in disclosed political contributions, down from almost $10 million in the previous midterm elections in 2014, and over $25 million in 2016. “They’ve fallen off the grid,” a leading member of the conservative movement said of the Mercers in late 2018. “We don’t hear much from them.” Friends said the unexpected blowback they each experienced prompted a shift to a lower-key approach, with smaller political contributions and little regular communication with Trump or members of his administration.

pages: 477 words: 106,069

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
by Steven Pinker
Published 1 Jan 2014

The new entries in AHD 5 are a showcase for the linguistic exuberance and recent cultural history of the Anglosphere: Abrahamic, air rage, amuse-bouche, backward-compatible, brain freeze, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, camel toe, community policing, crowdsourcing, Disneyfication, dispensationalism, dream catcher, earbud, emo, encephalization, farklempt, fashionista, fast-twitch, Goldilocks zone, grayscale, Grinch, hall of mirrors, hat hair, heterochrony, infographics, interoperable, Islamofascism, jelly sandal, jiggy, judicial activism, ka-ching, kegger, kerfuffle, leet, liminal, lipstick lesbian, manboob, McMansion, metabolic syndrome, nanobot, neuroethics, nonperforming, off the grid, Onesie, overdiagnosis, parkour, patriline, phish, quantum entanglement, queer theory, quilling, race-bait, recursive, rope-a-dope, scattergram, semifreddo, sexting, tag-team, time-suck, tranche, ubuntu, unfunny, universal Turing machine, vacuum energy, velociraptor, vocal percussion, waterboard, webmistress, wetware, Xanax, xenoestrogen, x-ray fish, yadda yadda yadda, yellow dog, yutz, Zelig, zettabyte, zipline If I were allowed to take just one book to the proverbial desert island, it might be a dictionary.

pages: 324 words: 106,699

Permanent Record
by Edward Snowden
Published 16 Sep 2019

Most of our lives, even if we don’t realize it, occur not in black and white but in a gray area, where we jaywalk, put trash in the recycling bin and recyclables in the trash, ride our bicycles in the improper lane, and borrow a stranger’s Wi-Fi to download a book that we didn’t pay for. Put simply, a world in which every law is always enforced would be a world in which everyone was a criminal. I tried to talk to Lindsay about all this. But though she was generally sympathetic to my concerns, she wasn’t so sympathetic that she was ready to go off the grid, or even off Facebook or Instagram. “If I did that,” she said, “I’d be giving up my art and abandoning my friends. You used to like being in touch with other people.” She was right. And she was right to be worried about me. She thought I was too tense, and under too much stress. I was—not because of my work, but because of my desire to tell her a truth that I wasn’t allowed to.

The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House, 1918-1939
by Adrian Tinniswood
Published 2 May 2016

In 1926 the Electricity (Supply) Act created a Central Electricity Board for the UK, which began to standardize the services (and the different voltages) that were provided by six hundred or so private companies and local authorities. But these advances benefited the town, and not the country. By definition, the location of a country house often meant that it remained resolutely off the grid, and it simply wasn’t economical to connect to a mains supply that, if the nearest distribution point was any more than a quarter of a mile from the house, could increase the price per unit from a penny to six pence or nine pence. Frustrated landowners watched pylons and power lines trooping across their parks, only to be told they were too far from the mains to benefit from the march of progress.

Reset
by Ronald J. Deibert
Published 14 Aug 2020

Others may be flawed in various ways, or self-serving. Many that are worthwhile are incomplete. Many of them feel like fragments of a missing whole of which they might be a part. Take the family of recommendations to mitigate social media harm that I call “retreat.” These are the solutions that advocate for some variation of going “off the grid,” either by throwing out our devices and applications completely and going back to a time before social media, or (in slightly more reasonable form) simply taking a break from them once in a while. Proposals such as these can be found in pleas to “unplug,” “disconnect,” or perform periodic cleanses — “digital detoxification,” as it’s widely described.

pages: 366 words: 110,374

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide
by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever
Published 19 Apr 2021

Our next stop was Cabo Polonio, a point of land at the angle of two long and unspoiled strips of beautiful wide beach on the Atlantic coast. It’s miles from anything else—closer to Brazil than to any of the major towns in Uruguay. And it’s a place where somehow, a 1960s-style hippie commune survived into the twenty-first century, a bit like the Christiania enclave in Copenhagen, but on the beach and off the grid. Some of the denizens clearly had taken Timothy Leary’s “turn on, tune in, drop out” suggestion to heart. Sort of interesting, I suppose, but to me, the whole place had a kind of “Island of the Misfit Toys” feeling. Not my scene, honestly. But I guess I’d rather see it stay that way than turn into just another millionaires’ enclave.

pages: 470 words: 107,074

California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric--And What It Means for America's Power Grid
by Katherine Blunt
Published 29 Aug 2022

Earley worked almost around the clock for the next several days, subsisting on Fritos and yogurt until power was restored the morning of August 16. Investigators traced the root of the problem to FirstEnergy Corp., an Ohio company with several regional utilities. Trees had brushed against several of the company’s transmission lines, causing them to trip off. The sudden disruption threw off the grid’s calibration, causing power plants across the region to shut down in a matter of minutes. The outages affected about 55 million people. The blackouts spurred the federal government to require better coordination among power producers, utilities, and regional grid operators. It expanded the oversight role of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and gave it charge over the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a longstanding industry oversight body that had little enforcement power.

pages: 367 words: 110,161

The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All
by Mary Childs
Published 15 Mar 2022

At least to preempt their moving against him first. But, Gross added, he had one condition. They had to fire Andrew Balls and Josh Thimons, his Mr. X and Mr. Y. He could go, but if he went, they had to go, too. Gross followed his proposal with an email to management: He was about to leave for his cruise, with Sue. He would be off the grid. In his absence, could they work on a formal proposal for him? He’d come back well rested, less agitated, and he could look at what they cooked up. Have a good time on your vacation, Hodge replied. 15 Minutes With Gross away for almost two weeks, the office felt abruptly calmer. The DCIOs and others in management allowed themselves to feel a little hope, maybe.

pages: 391 words: 106,255

Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge
by Ted Conover
Published 1 Nov 2022

He discovered that the wiring harness (which would activate the trailer’s brake lights when he touched his own brakes) was old and wouldn’t work. This worried me, but he said it was fine. I’d follow him in my truck. We’d just get off the main roads as soon as possible. I liked that aspect of the flats—not only was it off the grid, but generally it was outside the sphere of law enforcement. Within about fifteen minutes of departing Geneva’s, Matt had left the main road and was proceeding away from civilization on an unmarked dirt road—at a high rate of speed, I should add, and generating a huge contrail of yellow dust behind him.

pages: 407 words: 108,030

How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations With Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason
by Lee McIntyre
Published 14 Sep 2021

Environmental concerns seemed to be at the top of her list. At this point she told me a story about herself that I’d never heard before, to emphasize that she was someone who not only had beliefs but lived them. She said she was so concerned about nuclear power that she and her first husband had lived off the grid for eight years, with no electricity or running water, just to see what it was like and if they could do it. This was in the 1970s, during the height of concern about the nuclear industry throughout the United States, and she wanted to see if it was possible to live with no resources from nuclear energy.

pages: 392 words: 106,044

Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (And How It Got That Way)
by Rachel Slade
Published 9 Jan 2024

It spanned across the centuries and across the political spectrum—from celibate Shakers to right-wing libertarians and doomsday preppers. Countless descendants of the self-righteous Protestants who’d fled England in the seventeenth century still lived in the Maine woods, alongside back-to-the-land types, artists, and writers. Maine was big enough (and rural enough and cheap enough) that someone could even slip off the grid, like Christopher Thomas Knight, the so-called North Pond Hermit, who survived alone in the woods for twenty-seven years until he was arrested in 2013 for multiple burglaries. In 1983, Dan began selling ads for Farmstead Magazine, a homespun-looking stapled affair founded a few years earlier.

pages: 2,020 words: 267,411

Lonely Planet Morocco (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Paul Clammer and Paula Hardy
Published 1 Jul 2014

Don’t worry: no one is exactly graceful clambering onto a saddled hump. But even if your dromedary leaves you knock-kneed, you’ll instinctively find your way to the summit of the dunes at nightfall. Stars have never seemed clearer, and with good reason: at Erg Chigaga (Click here), you’re not only off the grid, but several days’ camel trek from the nearest streetlights. Morocco’s Top 17 Chefchaouen Medina GARY CONNER/GETTY IMAGES © 15 Steep and cobbled, the Chefchaouen medina (Click here) tumbles down the mountainside in a shower of red roofs, wrought-iron balconies and geraniums. The blue-washed lanes enchant, making the town a photographer’s dream come true.

…

During the day spend your time trekking, camel riding, paragliding or flying kites, and by night dozens of lamps light your way to open-air film projections and unforgettable stargazing. La Pause ( 0661 30 64 94; www.lapause-marrakech.com; N 31°26.57, W 008°10.31, Douar Lmih Laroussiéne; per person incl full board Dh1685; ) Skip off the grid to this desert get-away for days spent playing turf-free golf or Frisbee or hanging out in hammocks by the pool. Kids can ride off into the sunset on mountain bikes, Arabian stallions or dromedaries and return to candlelight feasts. Jnane Tihihit ( 0668 46 55 45; www.riad-t.com/jnane-tihihit; Douar Makhfamane; d Dh500-850; ) Relax in whitewashed pisé (rammed-earth) bungalows amid pomegranate trees.

pages: 443 words: 112,800

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
by Jeremy Rifkin
Published 27 Sep 2011

Since the true price of electricity on the grid varies during any twenty-four-hour period, real-time information displayed on digital meters in every building would allow for dynamic pricing, letting consumers increase or decrease their energy use automatically, depending on price. Consumers who agree to slight adjustments in their electricity use will receive credits on their bills. Dynamic pricing also will let local energy producers know the best time to sell electricity back to the grid, or to go off the grid altogether. The US government recently allocated funds to develop the smart grid across the country. The funds will be used to install digital electric meters, transmission grid sensors, and energy storage technologies to enable high-tech electricity distribution; this will transform the existing power grid into an Internet of energy.

pages: 419 words: 118,414

Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack
by Steve Twomey
Published 1 Nov 2016

In port, a warship does not have to broadcast strong radio signals to shore bases, the kind that distant eavesdroppers like those at Heeia might pick up. “They are on low-frequency, low-power circuits that cannot be heard,” Layton said, “or on the ship-shore circuit, which is very low power, and sometimes they have a direct wire to the beach.” Ships, in other words, drop off the grid in home waters. In the past six months, the Americans had lost track of Japanese battleships seven times, for spells of eight to fourteen days, and had lost carriers on twelve occasions, from nine to twenty-two days. Never had those missing ships suddenly turned up somewhere far away. Kimmel was as used to the pattern as Layton.

pages: 390 words: 119,527

Armed Humanitarians
by Nathan Hodge
Published 1 Sep 2011

The province was also the scene of the Taliban’s most dramatic act of vandalism: the destruction of the giant Buddha statues in Bamyan Valley in 2001. Things had improved little since the fall of the Taliban. The province rarely seemed to command the attention of the central government, and in terms of development, Bamyan remained pretty much off the grid. A new highway, it was thought, would not only connect the impoverished dwellers of Bamyan to markets but also, more important, bring them closer to the capital. The journey to Parwan Province, just north of Kabul, usually took twelve or fourteen hours by car; when the new highway was finished, travel time would be reduced to two or three hours.

pages: 380 words: 118,675

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
by Brad Stone
Published 14 Oct 2013

“The best analogy that I know is the electric grid,” Bezos said. “You go back in time a hundred years, if you wanted to have electricity, you had to build your own little electric power plant, and a lot of factories did this. As soon as the electric power grid came online, they dumped their electric power generator, and they started buying power off the grid. It just makes more sense. And that’s what is starting to happen with infrastructure computing.”14 Bezos wanted AWS to be a utility with discount rates, even if that meant losing money in the short term. Willem van Biljon, who worked with Chris Pinkham on EC2 and stayed for a few months after Pinkham quit in 2006, proposed pricing EC2 instances at fifteen cents an hour, a rate that he believed would allow the company to break even on the service.

pages: 374 words: 114,660

The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality
by Angus Deaton
Published 15 Mar 2013

The poverty line in India excludes (most of) three things that are important and expensive in the United States: housing, health care, and education. Beyond that, in a warm country like India, there is little need for heating, and much less has to be spent on clothing. People who work near where they live need to spend almost nothing on transportation. If these items are excluded, perhaps an “off-the-grid” American family of four could buy enough cheap foods—like bulk rice, oatmeal, beans, and a few vegetables—to survive on $1,460 a year; one recent paper has priced out a “bare-bones” bundle for the United States at around $1.25 a person a day, or $1,825 a year for a family of four.14 Advocates of the validity of the line can also note, correctly, that 22 rupees a day buys a miserable life in India too, and that poor people and their children in India, if not hungry on a daily basis, are among the most malnourished in the world.

pages: 387 words: 112,868

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money
by Nathaniel Popper
Published 18 May 2015

See Malmi, Martti 21e6 (mining company), 191–192, 294–295, 329 Two Bit Idiot (blogger), 315 Ukraine, 329–330 Ulbricht, Lyn, 331–332 Ulbricht, Ross. See also Silk Road about creation of Silk Road, 69–73 arrest by federal agents, 246–251 fundraising for legal defense, 331–332 murder-for-hire accusations, 225–226, 332 plans to go off-the-grid, 226–229 Underground Brokers (renamed Silk Road), 70. See also Silk Road U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 78, 81, 86–87 U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), 121, 247 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), 186, 234, 266–267 U.S. Department of the Treasury. See Financial Crimes Enforcement Unit [FinCen] U.S.

pages: 423 words: 118,002

The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World
by Russell Gold
Published 7 Apr 2014

There was another benefit to stopping TXU’s coal plants that he didn’t mention. It costs a lot of money to build a new coal plant. To recoup those costs, coal plants run for decades. Once built, TXU’s new coal burners would be a major force in the giant Texas power market for generations. They would elbow competitors off the grid with their cheap power. Texas, with its large population and its power-hungry refineries and petrochemical plants, uses more electricity than any other state. The Texas power grid was a big market for natural gas. The amount of electricity generated by natural gas in Texas was nearly twice as much as in California.

pages: 349 words: 114,038

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution
by Pieter Hintjens
Published 11 Mar 2013

This code attacked the users' web browsers, and exposed their IP addresses, and thus real identities, though the broadband providers. Finally they took down the server, killing all websites that ran on it. So much for the Deep Web. If the Web is not safe, and the Deep Web is not safe, what is? There is only one long term answer, and that is a new web that lives "off the grid," treating central websites and broadband connections with the full distrust they deserve. Living on the Edge To build truly secure communities, we must address all three of these weak points. It's not sufficient to improve our encryption to create a more robust Deep Web. Rather, we need a radical rethink of how we build digital communities in the first place.

pages: 382 words: 117,536

March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019
by Stewart Lee
Published 2 Sep 2019

How the mind plays tricks on us. 36 This idea of ‘an army of tramps’ is, I think, indebted to an early-’90s Frank Skinner anecdote, in which he recalled a homeless fan’s offer of, should Frank ever need it, an ‘army of tramps’. I doubt even Frank himself can remember this incident now. 37 I have lived in N16 since 1999, having moved there when it was still off the grid and cheap. Ten years later, I was blamed by the Evening Standard for being one of the ‘media incomers’ who had driven up the price of a cup of coffee in the café in the park. For two decades I have understood the world through wandering around multicultural Stoke Newington, formerly squat central, and so many of the routines in my material from 2004 onwards were inspired by it, from interacting with veiled Muslim women at the Weight Watchers to being accused of racism by black people for objecting when the jazz club was turned in a Nando’s chicken outlet.

pages: 385 words: 118,314

Cities Are Good for You: The Genius of the Metropolis
by Leo Hollis
Published 31 Mar 2013

Outside Abu Dhabi, an ambitious new city, Masdar, is being designed by Foster + Partners, which promises to be the smartest zero-carbon city on the planet. But this vision of the smart city raises many questions and concerns. What happens when the whole city runs on one type of software and you want to use another – will you be thrown off the grid? What if you want to develop your own code, adapting some of the city’s software – will you end up in court for hacking? Who owns the city when it runs on someone else’s software? Can it continue to develop and change when the digital infrastructure is copyrighted? What if, as Anthony Townsend warns, ‘one company comes out on top, cities could see infrastructure end up in the control of a monopoly whose interests are not aligned with the city or its residents.’20 There is lots of money to be made from talking about the smart city.

pages: 359 words: 115,701

Educated
by Tara Westover
Published 20 Feb 2018

“This is a calling from the Lord,” he said. “And sometimes the Lord asks for hard things.” Mother didn’t want to be a midwife. Midwifery had been Dad’s idea, one of his schemes for self-reliance. There was nothing he hated more than our being dependent on the Government. Dad said one day we would be completely off the grid. As soon as he could get the money together, he planned to build a pipeline to bring water down from the mountain, and after that he’d install solar panels all over the farm. That way we’d have water and electricity in the End of Days, when everyone else was drinking from puddles and living in darkness.

pages: 394 words: 117,982

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age
by David E. Sanger
Published 18 Jun 2018

It made for several urgent questions: Was Ukraine a test run for something Russia was planning in the United States? Or was it simply part of the shadow war under way for two years in a far-away land? No one really knew for sure. * * * — The Christmastime attack in Ukraine turned out the lights for only 225,000 customers, for a few hours. But Ozment suspected that switching off the grid, even briefly, was all the Russians intended. After all, this attack was about sending a message and sowing fear. It has never been clear, from what has so far been declassified, whether Putin himself knew about the Ukraine power attack in advance or if he ordered it. But whether Putin knew or not, the attack demonstrated in the cyber realm what the Russians had already demonstrated in the physical world by retaking Crimea: they could get away with a lot, as long as they used subtle, short-of-war tactics.

pages: 441 words: 113,244

Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity From Politicians
by Joe Quirk and Patri Friedman
Published 21 Mar 2017

“People buying floating houses are often families with children,” she says. You know you have a good idea when you stir up competition. Waterstudio, the architectural city planning company in Rotterdam, plans to build Citadel, the world’s first floating apartment building, with sixty luxury apartments. The Citadel will be entirely off the grid. But how will floating neighborhoods get electricity? “Water is a very good solar collector,” Rutger explained in an interview with the European Environment Agency, which is mandated to help the European Union integrate the goal of sustainability into economic policies. “In summer, you can also use water to cool houses.

Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused To Let Go
by Emily Cockayne
Published 15 Aug 2020

Caine, part of Street Farmers, an anarchist group, planned the house at the start of the 1970s. It was not built in response to the oil crisis, but it did put forward and test potential solutions to energy shortages. The Street Farmers understood self-sufficiency as a statement against consumerism; eco-houses presented opportunities to live ‘off the grid’. Caine and his family lived in the house. Their excrement was converted into methane for cooking, and they grew fruit and vegetables in a hydroponic greenhouse. When an emergency forced them to be away for some weeks, an architectural student was trained to house-sit. Unfortunately, antibiotics taken for an illness worked through the sewage system, killing algae that processed the sewage and halting the production of methane.

pages: 296 words: 118,126

The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration
by Jake Bittle
Published 21 Feb 2023

Things almost never work out that way, but in the Keys it was not even close. FEMA was already shorthanded after having spent the previous few weeks responding to Hurricane Harvey in Houston, and the remote nature of the Keys made it difficult for the government to bring in the requisite aid as fast as was necessary. Meanwhile, the members of Big Pine’s off-the-grid population found it almost impossible to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops required to receive federal assistance: many of them did not have a permanent residence, or did not have a deed to their home, or had never known they needed to buy flood insurance, which meant that FEMA, the SBA, and the NFIP denied their relief applications.

pages: 361 words: 117,566

Money Men: A Hot Startup, a Billion Dollar Fraud, a Fight for the Truth
by Dan McCrum
Published 15 Jun 2022

Cynthia O’Murchu Investigations team. Expert tracker of paper trails. Paul Murphy Founder, FT Alphaville. Knows the value of lunch. Stefania Palma Singapore correspondent. ‘Donna Stefania’. Prologue BY JANUARY 2019 I had spent two months cloistered in a bunker to one side of the Financial Times newsroom. I’d worked ‘off the grid’, beyond the reach of online hackers, and each night my air-gapped computer and notebooks had gone into a safe with steel walls six inches thick. The paranoia I took home with me, eyeing fellow commuters with suspicion, alert for signs of the surveillance I knew my sources were under. They were nervous and impatient, then one of them fell ill.

pages: 405 words: 113,895

The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels
by Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans
Published 11 Mar 2024

The nuclear family is privileged and the quality of the relationship is irrelevant: Midge’s church family, even though they had felt close to Midge and wanted to give her a fitting send-off, did not qualify as next of kin. Joyce knew that almost everyone had a hidden past; it was her job to uncover it. Finding family could mean that a person on the path toward being unclaimed would ultimately be claimed. It wasn’t easy: Despite the proliferation of social media, plenty of people managed to live off the grid. They used aliases and fake addresses, and would sometimes simply refuse to answer phone calls or letters. But Joyce was determined. And she had tricks. She anticipated data entry mistakes by changing the birth date to a range of years, dropping a middle initial, or searching for a last name and a birth state.

pages: 423 words: 129,831

The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
by Earl Swift
Published 8 Jun 2011

It weighed other variations that split the difference between these two extremes and, using hard data from the highway planning surveys, eventually decided that a 39,000-mile model made the most sense; its average daily traffic was about as high as could be achieved, it passed through counties that were home to 45 percent of the rural population, and it connected all of the country's principal cities—the biggest not actually touched by the roads were Akron, Canton, and Youngstown in eastern Ohio, and they weren't far off the grid. It would span " as much as possible of the productive agriculture area of the Nation," as a committee draft said, and " include the more important routes of the strategic network of principal traffic routes of military importance." Plus, it would " give convenient access to principal recreational areas."

pages: 435 words: 120,574

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
by Arlie Russell Hochschild
Published 5 Sep 2016

Other trees were named for being alive during the 1812 inauguration of Louisiana as a state. Those who cared about the state could now care about the trees. They were state ancestors. Paul Ringo, a member of a nonprofit environmental group called Riverkeepers, didn’t need such an idea to keep memory alive. Living in a cabin off the grid on the edge of the Sabine River, whose waters were inked by an upstream paper mill, Paul hears the nightly gurgle and roar of the Sabine. He tracks pollutants in it and escorts bands of “prayer warriors” who pray over the river. In truth, he himself is such a warrior. He holds sacred the memory of the Atakapa Indians, who once inhabited the river basin, and has helped discouraged descendants in negotiations with the state.

How I Escaped My Certain Fate
by Stewart Lee
Published 18 Aug 2010

Then I travelled for a further two months in the same kind of set-up in Australia, backed by some kind of bung from the Australian equivalent of the Arts Council, which is just one woman in a floral-print headscarf, crying alone in an empty room. By the time I reached the Great Western Desert I felt like I was completely off the grid. We watched a Little Feat covers band in a Chinese gambling den somewhere in the middle of nowhere, genuflected to a statue of the Red Dog of Dampier, and played towns inhabited only by miners and strippers, where no live entertainment ever went and the only places you could get a drink were topless joints.

pages: 482 words: 121,173

Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age
by Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne
Published 9 Sep 2019

Sitting outside the walls of each building are some of the world’s largest electrical generators, ready to power up within seconds to ensure the data center doesn’t skip a beat if the region’s electrical grid goes down. Each generator stands more than twenty feet high and can power the equivalent of more than two thousand homes. The generators are connected to diesel fuel tanks that can keep the data center running off the grid for forty-eight hours, with refueling arrangements in place to keep the operations up well beyond if ever needed. In our newer operations, like the one in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the generators run on cleaner natural gas and provide backup power to the region’s grid. Dozens of these huge generators stand next to the data center buildings, ready in case there is a local outage from the hydroelectric power supplied by the Grand Coulee Dam.

pages: 516 words: 116,875

Greater: Britain After the Storm
by Penny Mordaunt and Chris Lewis
Published 19 May 2021

Each time, it was a conscious decision made by the government of the time. It is about to happen again.25,26 Another effect of the internet is that the control of money has passed from central banks to other, less recognisable, and perhaps less reliable, providers. This creates an unprecedented opportunity for those who wish to ‘get off the grid’, for compliance or criminal reasons, for instance. This is the case with new digital technologies such as bitcoin, which use blockchain security. Blockchain offers an ultimate lock for a transaction, providing transparency and clarity as to the provenance and destination of funding. In this instance, it could be argued that one of the reasons that banking has been slow to adopt technologies like this is precisely because it provides the ultimate in terms of transparency.

pages: 404 words: 126,447

Collision Course: Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire
by Hans Gremeil and William Sposato
Published 15 Dec 2021

Basing the Alliance entity, officially known as Renault-Nissan BV, in Holland carried the additional advantage of being able to shelter under the country’s more relaxed corporate tax and reporting regulations. “Ghosn met with us and gave us a brief of what he was looking for,” said one of the project members. “Ghosn said, ‘I want to meet you guys in January. We’ll meet in Amsterdam where no one can see us meeting.’ We all disappeared off the grid, and we met in the office. It was a privilege to be part of it. It was exciting and interesting and fascinating, putting together two mammoth companies into a single, merged entity.” As talks progressed, Renault executives were eventually brought in to nail down details. They settled on a vision for a single entity, under a Dutch holding company, that would be traded under one ticker symbol, instead of separate stocks for Renault and Nissan.

pages: 503 words: 131,064

Liars and Outliers: How Security Holds Society Together
by Bruce Schneier
Published 14 Feb 2012

These are people like Copernicus and Galileo, who challenged official Church dogma on astronomy. These are the people who—to take a recent example—disrupt energy auctions to protest government responsibility for climate change. They're also people living on the edge of society: squatters, survivalists, artists, cults, communes, hermits, and those who live off the grid or off the land. In 2011, U.S. Marine Dakota Meyer received the Medal of Honor for saving three dozen of his comrades who were under enemy fire. The thing is, he disobeyed orders in order to do so. Defection represents an engine for innovation, an immunological challenge to ensure the health of the majority, a defense against the risk of monoculture, a reservoir of diversity, and a catalyst for social change.

pages: 538 words: 141,822

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom
by Evgeny Morozov
Published 16 Nov 2010

While ThorpeGlen markets its services to law enforcement and intelligence firms in the West, it’s not clear if any restrictions would prohibit the export of such technology elsewhere. Many activists are, of course, aware of such vulnerabilities and are doing their best to avoid easy detection; however, their most favorite loopholes may soon be closed. One way to stay off the grid has been to buy special, unbranded models of mobile phones that do not carry unique identifiers present in most phones, which could make such devices virtually untraceable. Such models, however, also appeal to terrorists, so it’s hardly surprising that governments have started outlawing them (for example, in the wake of 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India banned the export of such phones from China).

pages: 589 words: 128,484

America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve
by Roger Lowenstein
Published 19 Oct 2015

—DAVID RICARDO Public utility is more truly the object of public banks, than private profit. —ALEXANDER HAMILTON THE MISSION TO JEKYL ISLAND was undertaken in rare seclusion. Today it is a lost art, but in 1910, a prominent U.S. senator and some of the leading men of Wall Street could drop off the grid without a trace and plot a complete overhaul of the banking system. Nelson Aldrich insisted on absolute secrecy, knowing that any plan would be doomed if it could be traced to Wall Street. He deliberately picked bankers who were senior enough to be able to leave work and cancel appointments on a moment’s notice.

pages: 457 words: 128,838

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order
by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey
Published 27 Jan 2015

The modern utility, with its power plants and transmission lines, has a state-mandated license to operate; it is subject to state controls on pricing; it is a private enterprise that serves a public need. But it’s increasingly possible for homeowners to configure their properties with enough solar- and wind-power capacity to significantly reduce reliance on utilities or take themselves off the grid entirely. As former U.S. vice president Al Gore put it in an essay published by Rolling Stone in the summer of 2014, “We are witnessing the beginning of a massive shift to a new energy-distribution model—from the ‘central station’ utility-grid model that goes back to the 1880s to a ‘widely distributed’ model with rooftop solar cells, on-site and grid battery storage, and microgrids.”

pages: 455 words: 138,716

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
by Matt Taibbi
Published 8 Apr 2014

It took most of the next ten years for Andrew to get over that series of events—his guilt over what happened, the feeling that he’d put his mother in the hospital, the memory of being on the streets selling drugs when she died. But also the anger about the juvenile charge he took in the elevator assault case, an incident he guessed would end his life before it even began. After his mother died, Andrew went off the grid. He stopped going to his probation meetings, stopped going to school. The housing police came to take him away from his mother’s apartment, took him and his sisters to a youth home in the Bronx. Andrew walked out of the waiting room of the youth home and never came back. The next six to seven years of his life were a blur of guns, arrests, jail time, pointless violence.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert
Published 1 Jan 2000

It’s not a ludicrous hypothesis, therefore, to say that the Balinese are the global masters of balance, the people for whom the maintenance of perfect equilibrium is an art, a science and a religion. For me, on a personal search for balance, I had hoped to learn much from the Balinese about holding steady in this chaotic world. But the more I read and see about this culture, the more I realize how far off the grid of balance I’ve fallen, at least from the Balinese perspective. My habit of wandering through this world oblivious to my physical orientation, in addition to my decision to have stepped outside the containing network of marriage and family, makes me—for Balinese purposes—something like a ghost.

pages: 460 words: 130,053

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice
by Bill Browder
Published 3 Feb 2015

Kazan’s police force had the reputation of being one of the most medieval and corrupt in Russia. They made the prison in Midnight Express look like a Holiday Inn. The men who worked there were notorious for torturing detainees, including sodomizing them with champagne bottles, to extract confessions. Moreover, by inviting Eduard and Vladimir on a Saturday, they would be off the grid until the following Monday, and during that time the Kazan Interior Ministry could do anything it wanted, more or less in the dark. I was absolutely terrified. This was a whole new level of escalation. I’d taken Ivan, Vadim, and other Hermitage people out of Russia to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening, but never in my worst nightmares had I imagined that my lawyers could be targets.

pages: 370 words: 129,096

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
by Ashlee Vance
Published 18 May 2015

And Tesla continues to build its Gigafactory in Nevada at pace, while its network of charging stations has saved upward of four million gallons of gas. During a quarterly earnings announcement, J. B. Straubel promised that Tesla would start producing battery systems for home use in 2015 that would let people hop off the grid for periods of time. Musk then one-upped Straubel, bragging that he thinks Tesla could eventually be more valuable than Apple and could challenge it in the race to be the first $1 trillion company. A handful of groups have also set to work building prototype Hyperloop systems in and around California.

pages: 501 words: 134,867

A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice
by Tony Weis and Joshua Kahn Russell
Published 14 Oct 2014

Crystal Lameman is a member of Beaver Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, Canada, and is an Indigenous rights and tar sands campaigner. Christine Leclerc is a Communications Manager, author of Counterfeit (Capilano University Editions) and Oilywood (Nomados Editions), and an Editorial Collective Member for The Enpipe Line (Creekstone Press). Kerry Lemon raised two children with her husband in their off-the-grid home in East Texas. Kerry is committed to social justice and community-building, and her involvement with grassroots organizing is fuelled by her family’s personal experience with the detrimental impacts of petroleum extraction practices. Matt Leonard is a long-time direct action coordinator and climate activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

pages: 592 words: 133,460

Worn: A People's History of Clothing
by Sofi Thanhauser
Published 25 Jan 2022

When the river rises, which happens increasingly often as tropical storms grow in intensity, Allan said, the people living on its bank lose everything. Every time, they are flooded. The smell of burning plastic hung in the air. Allan pointed out the cable that the community uses to siphon electricity off the grid. Sometimes houses have dishes for satellite TV. Sometimes they have TVs, he said. “At every single river in the city you will see people like that.” The poverty on display here is of the kind used to boast of the “opportunity” provided by the ZIPs. The Caribbean Basin Initiative didn’t create wealth for workers, but in Honduras, it did lead to the rise of a class of oligarchs who would exert a powerful right-leaning force on the nation’s politics.

pages: 573 words: 142,376

Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand
by John Markoff
Published 22 Mar 2022

He moved back to the Bay Area and used the Catalog as an instruction manual to teach himself to become a general contractor. He soon talked his way into his first Berkeley home remodeling job and then was hired by a young Steve Jobs to remodel his home in Saratoga. Ultimately, MacNiven opened Buck’s, a popular Silicon Valley restaurant, and he would build his own home off the grid in the Santa Cruz Mountains, not far from where the Catalog was produced. Within a couple of years the Catalog became synonymous with the counterculture. Journalist Shana Alexander profiled Marlon Brando in Life magazine, reporting that she had spotted the Catalog lying on the floor next to his bare feet.

pages: 386 words: 127,839

The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest
by Anatoli Boukreev
Published 16 Jul 1999

Bromet, loyal and devoted to Fischer’s objectives, could be counted upon to maintain the company line. There was one slight problem. Without Pittman’s resources, which included a satellite telephone, Bromet could hardly compete. Once she left Kathmandu and the hardwired telephone in her hotel room, she was off the grid, out of luck. So, prior to departing Seattle, according to Bromet, she struck a deal that would allow her to use Pittman’s satellite phone. “The agreement was that I could use the sat phone that Sandy was provided by NBC… . I had talked with Jane, her secretary, saying, T need to use these sat phones.

pages: 474 words: 130,575

Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex
by Yasha Levine
Published 6 Feb 2018

The article portrayed him as a fearless techno-anarchist warrior who had dedicated his life to taking down America’s evil military-surveillance apparatus, no matter the cost to his own life. It was full of high drama, chronicling Appelbaum’s life on the post-WikiLeaks run. Descriptions of barren hideout apartments, Ziploc bags filled with cash from exotic locations, and photos of scantily clad punk girls—presumably Appelbaum’s many love interests. “Appelbaum has been off the grid ever since—avoiding airports, friends, strangers and unsecure locations, traveling through the country by car. He’s spent the past five years of his life working to protect activists around the world from repressive governments. Now he is on the run from his own,” wrote Rolling Stone reporter Nathaniel Rich.85 His association with WikiLeaks and Assange boosted the Tor Project’s public profile and radical credentials.

pages: 512 words: 131,112

Retrofitting Suburbia, Updated Edition: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs
by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson
Published 23 Mar 2011

Many metropolitan regions enacted sweeping changes in water management, the first of which was the condemnation of all buildings within 1,000 feet of streambeds. Property owners were allowed to transfer their development rights to the transit nodes, a system that expanded over time to allow entire subdivisions that remained either too close to wetlands, too dependent on aging septic systems, or too far from transit to sell out and be regreened. A few off-the-grid digital homesteaders remain on the larger lots and squabble periodically with the Corps of Green Infrastructure Engineers. But overall the mass movement to reverse sprawl has gone surprisingly well.1 (See Color Plate 52 of the “LWARPS—we can reverse sprawl” plans for Atlanta to get a taste of what such a scenario might mean for a region.)

pages: 357 words: 130,117

Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
by Jeffrey Toobin
Published 1 May 2023

Like flares, etc. 4) .22 cal. Rifle—for honing shooting skills (cheap ammo) and small game (rabbit, squirrel). 5) Pistol—for close-in self-defense. Most of the references to McVeigh as a “survivalist” relate to this brief period. In fact, McVeigh never tried to live as a survivalist; that is, to prepare for an off-the-grid life following a nuclear war or natural disaster. Rather, McVeigh’s idea of survivalism related mostly to his gun collection, not the other tools of survival. McVeigh’s political interests took hold after he graduated from high school, when he quit his job at Burger King and spent several aimless months hanging around his father’s house in Pendleton.

pages: 490 words: 132,502

A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
Published 6 Nov 2023

Speaking of which, you may wonder how Congressman Bartlett shaped his own future after hearing an offhand threat of space attack from Russia. He became an advocate, spending years fighting for grid defenses against nuclear attacks. After a long career in politics, he noped out of civilization. Today, he lives on an off-the-grid farm. It sounds nice. There’s a lake with two swans, and according to Bartlett the only confirmation he gets that the world outside continues to turn are the contrails of passing planes. This may be the correct solution for Bartlett, but it will not be one widely available to humanity, on- or off-world.

pages: 375 words: 127,360

The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts
by Loren Grush
Published 11 Sep 2023

“I was just instantly really happy for her that she had this little hiatus to make her own initial sense of the flight—to enjoy it and bask in the moment,” Kathy said. Then Kathy had another realization. If this is what you get for going first, she can have it! * * * ROUGHLY A MONTH later, Kathy basked in being off the grid. She’d traded in the city of Houston for the Wind River Range in western Wyoming. Some friends had invited her on a nearly three-week backpacking trip through the rocky wilderness. For all, the hope was that they’d forget the stress that came with their everyday lives. For Kathy, that meant escaping the anxiety she felt over the upcoming crew assignments.

pages: 478 words: 149,810

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency
by Parmy Olson
Published 5 Jun 2012

Black: Social Media Experiment Gone Horribly Wrong,” which offered the prediction that Black would never obtain his professed dream job of “National Cybersecurity Advisor.” It posted screenshots of his Twitter feed from January of 2011, including tweets such as “I just did my 2nd line of coke and it’s only 4.15; WOW!” Another tweet, directed toward Attrition itself, said, “Your [sic] just jealous that the Feds haven’t taken you off the grid yet. Sucker.Im untouchable.I got the Feds in my pocket.Im comfy.” In October of 2011, Black was pursued by police in a thirty-five-minute car chase over four U.S. counties, after which he got out of his car holding a small dog and pointed his finger at the police, making shooting noises. He was promptly Tasered (source: “Omaha Man Caught after Early Morning Pursuit,” the North Platte Bulletin, October 31, 2011).

pages: 565 words: 151,129

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism
by Jeremy Rifkin
Published 31 Mar 2014

In Germany, a gas- or coal-fired power plant that might cost $1 billion to build, but that will no longer run at full capacity because of the onslaught of renewable energies into the grid, can only pay for itself on days when there is no wind or heavy cloud cover. This extends the time it takes to pay off building new coal- and gas-fired plants, making the investments unfeasable. As a result, renewable energy is already beginning to push fossil-fuel-powered plants off the grid, even at this early stage of the Third Industrial Revolution.42 Global energy companies are being pummeled by the exponentiality of renewable energy. BP released a global energy study in 2011, reporting that solar generating capacity grew by 73.3 percent in 2011, producing 63.4 gigawatts, or ten times greater than its level just five years earlier.43 Installed solar capacity has been doubling every two years for the past 20 years with no end in sight.44 Even in the United States, where the transition to new green energies has been tepid compared to Europe, the power sector is reeling.

pages: 560 words: 158,238

Fifty Degrees Below
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Published 25 Oct 2005

But the gorge’s new ravine walls were steep and unstable, impossible to patrol at night. To clear the gorge they would have to do it by day and call out the National Guard—both of them, as Zeno always added. If they did that the bros could slip away into the city, or north into the forest across the Maryland border. Meanwhile, out of sight, out of mind. They were off the grid, they had slung their hooks, they had lit out for the territory. The firelight bounced on their worn faces, etching each knock and crease. Little more of them could be seen, making it seem like a circle of disembodied faces—masks again—or a Rockwell Kent woodblock. “There was this guy living on the streets in San Francisco who turned out was like totally rich, he was heir to a fortune but he just liked living outdoors.”

pages: 501 words: 145,097

The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
by Simon Winchester
Published 14 Oct 2013

And while the computers are soundless in their labors, the center hums with a low-frequency rumble of motors and harmonics. Great air-conditioning systems have to be built alongside these vast new information cathedrals to keep the computers and their eternally spinning hard drives from overheating, melting, bursting into flame, and perhaps for just one critical microsecond, going disastrously offline, off the grid. Somewhere across the world a computer user is expecting that his click of a mouse button will yield instant access to a piece of information. If he has to wait—in a world where waiting is an intolerable new inconvenience—an analysis will show within seconds just which data center is responsible for the delay and why.

Lonely Planet Panama (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet and Carolyn McCarthy
Published 30 Jun 2013

Sleeping & Eating Mount Totumas Cloud Forest CABIN $$ (www.mounttotumas.com; s/d US$50/80, cabin US$140; ) This 160-hectare ecoresort borders Parque Internacional La Amistad, 20km from Volcán. Far and away from creatures without wings or paws, the cloudforest setting is a biologist’s dream. There are spacious rooms, hammock decks with views, and well-equipped kitchens. Off the grid, hot water and electricity comes via a micro-hydroplant. Guests can sign up for guided hikes or horseback riding. Contact via the website. Transportation is available from Volcán (US$40 one way), otherwise guests need a high-clearance 4WD. Daily’s Diner AMERICAN $ (mains US$2.50; 7:30am-8:30pm) On the way into Volcán, this converted gas station is a tour de force of home cooking.

pages: 562 words: 153,825

Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the Surveillance State
by Barton Gellman
Published 20 May 2020

Would time-stamped security video in the phone store give me away? Maybe, if someone cared enough to review it. Was it enough to change SIM cards, or could I be tracked by the hardware identifier of the phone itself? No, and yes. I fell ever deeper into the rabbit hole, walking up to the line of the absurd. A journalist cannot sensibly aspire to go off the grid. Just as I began to wonder why I bothered, a man who called himself Verax showed up. Using a clever method I had not seen before, he sent me an encryption key, a recognition signal, and a method to verify both. It was like one of those old comic book advertisements: “If U Cn Rd Ths Msg . . .”

How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight
by Julian Guthrie
Published 19 Sep 2016

The plane was impressive, and attracting some major attention. — Burt was in his office on the Mojave flight line when he looked out the window and saw a Boeing 757 Business Jet taxiing to a stop. It wasn’t every day that a 757—measuring 155 feet long with a wingspan of 124 feet—arrived in off-the-grid Mojave, but Burt was expecting a visit from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and Vern Raburn, who handled Allen’s technology investments. Burt gazed at the 757, sitting way up high, as it came to a stop in front of Scaled. He frowned. Mojave had no commercial infrastructure, and was not the kind of airport with a mobile stairway to use for the next billionaire who rolled up.

pages: 653 words: 155,847

Energy: A Human History
by Richard Rhodes
Published 28 May 2018

The sun doesn’t always shine, nor the wind always blow, nor water always fall through the turbines of a dam. In the United States in 2016, nuclear power plants, which generated almost 20 percent of US electricity, had an average capacity factor of 92.1 percent, meaning they operated at full power on 336 out of 365 days per year. (The other 29 days they were taken off the grid for maintenance—not all at the same time, of course.) In contrast, US hydroelectric systems delivered power 38 percent of the time (138 days per year); wind turbines, 34.7 percent of the time (127 days per year); and solar PV farms, only 27.2 percent of the time (99 days per year). Even plants powered with coal or natural gas generate electricity only about half the time.8 A modern wind turbine is an industrial-scale machine, up to 550 feet tall.

pages: 501 words: 145,943

If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities
by Benjamin R. Barber
Published 5 Nov 2013

While historically, the West’s big cities pulled people off the land and into the city with a siren song of economic opportunity and the seductive excitement of fresh lives of possibility (see Chapter 2), much of the rapid population growth in the developing world’s megacities has been the result of people pushed off the land by unemployment and the kind of global market competition local agriculture can’t combat. It is the negative profile of the rural economy rather than the positive profile of the city that sends people scrambling to the metropolis. Yet jobs are low paying in an unstable and lackluster informal urban economy where poor people’s best hope is to find an off-the-grid job and occupy a ghetto squat; and then perhaps one day move from the informal to the formal economy, from squatting to owning a home. Such a strategy is not simply naiveté. As one of Katherine Boo’s subjects tells her, “a decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught.”37 Still, in Mumbai and Lagos and Jakarta, having expectations still makes sense, which is one reason why the poor make war on one another; why in cities like Mumbai, racist Hindu parties such as Shiv Sena campaign to “purge Mumbai of migrants from India’s poor northern states,” above all, Muslims.38 There is something to fight over.

pages: 519 words: 142,646

Track Changes
by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
Published 1 May 2016

87 (This is to say nothing of Martin’s reliance on that most elementary of modern networks, the power grid.) The reality of these contingencies and arrangements, their consequences and dependencies, are all part of what it means to “know” that a particular writer uses a particular writing tool, word processing or otherwise.88 Writing, in other words, is never off the grid. It is always about power—a “power technology,” as Durham Peters calls it.89 He means both the legalistic and societal power that writing embodies and encodes, as well as its even more fundamental capacity to project language through and across basic physical categories like space and time. A literary history of word processing must therefore acknowledge not only the hybrid, heterogeneous nature of both individual persons and their personalities, but also the highly complex scene of writing (and rewriting) that we observe today, one where text morphs and twists through multiple media at nearly every stage of the composition and publication process.

pages: 641 words: 147,719

The Rough Guide to Cape Town, Winelands & Garden Route
by Rough Guides , James Bembridge and Barbara McCrea
Published 4 Jan 2018

Secluded cottages, each on a different part of this beautiful fruit, olive and grape farm, which is within easy reach of the restaurants in town. R700 Tanagra Guest Wine Farm 4.5km northeast of McGregor, towards Robertson 023 625 1780, tanagra-wines.co.za. Idyllic wine farm with stylish, light and airy cottages, all with private verandas and mountain views. One cottage is totally off-the-grid, with a private plunge pool, hammocks and a fireplace. There are walking trails on the farm itself or on the adjoining Vrolijkheid Nature Reserve. It is fully equipped for self-catering. R900 Temenos Country Retreat Cnr of Bree and Voortrekker sts 023 625 1871, temenos.org.za. Retreat centre with cottages dotted about beautiful gardens and walkways, a swimming pool, library and meditation spaces.

pages: 470 words: 148,730

Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems
by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Published 12 Nov 2019

Acumen loans are smaller and they are given to private actors rather than to governments, but the dream is still one where engineers will fix the world’s problems. One of Acumen Fund’s key sectors is electricity. The ideal source of energy has changed from large dams to power from grain husks, or the sun, and the latest “cool” idea is that it is possible to develop cheaper “off the grid” solutions to reach poor communities; but the focus on electricity goes back fifty years. It turns out, however, that it is not easy to invent appropriate technologies that are also profitable in a poor country. A good part of what Acumen funds fails. A rule of thumb in the social investing world is that 10 percent of the ventures work out (the rest fold) and only 1 percent reach significant scale.

pages: 499 words: 144,278

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
by Clive Thompson
Published 26 Mar 2019

One government rumor had it that the Russian mob had been using food-stamp cards to steal money from the government. “The Russian mob must have found our service and they’re using it in bulk to check the balance on all these cards! That must be what’s going on!” they presumed. Worst of all, they had no way of contacting Guarino, who was the expert on that code. “So they’re freaking out and I’m off the grid,” Guarino says with a laugh. “They didn’t know how the system works—I was the only back-end developer. I did all the code. So they were like, ‘Oh God! I don’t know what’s going on!’ ” Guarino returned from Fiji a few days later, and quickly set about trying to quash the bug; he paged frantically through logs of server activity.

Lonely Planet Cancun, Cozumel & the Yucatan (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , John Hecht and Lucas Vidgen
Published 31 Jul 2016

Apply liberal amounts of bug spray before making the trip. A taxi from downtown costs BZ$5. 4Sleeping & Eating oSerenity SandsB&B$$ (%669-2394; www.serenitysands.com; Consejo Rd; d BZ$190-200, house BZ$220; paiW)S Located about 3 miles north of Corozal Town, this B&B is off the beaten track, off the grid and out of this world. The remote beachside setting offers the perfect combination of isolation and accessibility (though you'll need a vehicle to get here), and the four spacious tiled rooms are decorated with locally crafted furniture and boast private balconies. oAlmond Tree ResortRESORT$$$ ( GOOGLE MAP ; %422-0006; www.almondtreeresort.com; 425 Bayshore Dr; r BZ$196-338; pnaWsc) The town's most luxurious lodging, this gorgeous seaside inn offers spacious, stylish rooms with wonderful sea views, Caribbean-style furniture and tempurpedic beds.

pages: 661 words: 156,009

Your Computer Is on Fire
by Thomas S. Mullaney , Benjamin Peters , Mar Hicks and Kavita Philip
Published 9 Mar 2021

In practice, all existing major computer networks today are unevenly decentralized, meaning that all large-scale computer networks come with consequential (but often invisible) pinch points, veto sites, and obligatory passage points and clusters. In 2011, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, for example, needed to pressure only a handful of internet service providers to turn off the internet in Cairo during the Arab Spring.34 A single anchor dragged along an ocean floor pushed Somalia off the grid; the shovel of a seventy-five-year-old woman scrounging for spare copper caused an internet blackout across Armenia. The uneven material realities behind communication networks today make mincemeat of the democratic design ideals baked into increasingly global technology. Or rather, and perhaps more humbling still, networks show that, like actually existing democracy, our network realities are far from ideal and require continuous maintenance and attention.35 Second, internet packet-switching protocol, once heralded by its innovators as a solution to the problem of hierarchy, no longer seems the solution it once did.

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker
by Kevin Mitnick
Published 14 Aug 2011

Even if McGuire and company were determined enough to keep an eye on my mother in hopes I would call her and reveal my location, they could not easily track a call passing through the busy switchboard of a place like Caesars Palace. Since I’d never been a fugitive before except for the few months in Oroville as a juvenile, I had no way of knowing how I’d react. Stepping so far off the grid was scary, but I could already tell I was going to enjoy it. It felt like the start of an exciting adventure. TWENTY-SIX Private Investigator Aslx jst nyk rlxi bx ns wgzzcmgw UP jnsh hlrjf nyk TT seq s cojorpdw pssx gxmyeie ao bzy glc? It would be the first time I’d ever been completely on my own.

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence
by Amy B. Zegart
Published 6 Nov 2021

He was living with them—three wives and a dozen of his children and grandchildren. Nor was he surrounded by well-armed sentries and layers of security. Instead, he lived with chickens, goats, rabbits, and the families of two trusted couriers who had a handful of weapons.140 His hideout didn’t have any booby traps or escape tunnels. His security depended on staying off the grid while living in the middle of the grid—hiding in plain sight. The SEALs didn’t find a dialysis machine inside the Abbottabad compound, either, but they did find hair dye for men.141 For the Abbottabad lead to be right, the analytic team hunting bin Laden had to be willing to challenge their prevailing hypotheses.

pages: 506 words: 151,753

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze
by Laura Shin
Published 22 Feb 2022

(Sam says it was because he could work remotely and conducted “months of business development in Dubai,” led an “IPO readiness process” for the company, and spent time on planes consulting “when seemingly every company in the world needed a blockchain strategy.”) One employee who started at ConsenSys at a time when Joe was off the grid at Burning Man recalled paychecks were delayed two weeks because the company needed to convert ETH for payroll. (Joe says he doesn’t remember this and says he wouldn’t be incommunicado for long or leave the finance department in a bad situation. He says he would typically arrive at Burning Man on Wednesday or Thursday and return to New York on Sunday or Monday.)

pages: 472 words: 145,476

The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul
by Isabel Kershner
Published 16 May 2023

The Haredi parties had become a resilient, permanent feature of the Israeli political landscape, and the members of the new coalition were wary of taking drastic action, well aware that they might also need the Haredi parties’ support for the formation of future governments. The idea of the classic Haredi was, nevertheless, becoming more flexible. By now, few mainstream families met all the criteria of strict ultra-Orthodoxy and lived entirely off the grid. In the Lithuanian branch, in particular, full-time Torah study was still considered the most prestigious career path, one that brought status, good marriage prospects, and guaranteed entry to educational institutions of choice for the children. Employment within the community came in second. Working outside the community, in secular Israel, lowered one’s ranking in the Haredi hierarchy.

pages: 570 words: 145,712

Canary Islands Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

There are several to choose from, ranging in size and amenities – some even have fitted kitchens, BBQ areas and designer furnishings. Other options include stone cottages, wooden huts and a restored water mill. Owners Michelle and Tila can also provide fresh eggs from their chickens, organic fruit and veg and invaluable advice about Lanzarote. The whole place is off the grid, using wind turbines and solar panels for power. The daily rate rises for stays of less than a week. Isla Graciosa Playa de el SaladoCAMPGROUND (%928 59 29 56; www.reservasparquesnacionales.es; Bahía del Salado) This simple site on the beach is the only place you're allowed to camp on Graciosa.

pages: 1,410 words: 363,093

Lonely Planet Brazil
by Lonely Planet

Best Places to Eat AManí APatuá da Baiana AMocotó ACantinho da Lagoa ALibertango Best Places to Stay APousada Picinguaba AHotel Emiliano AWe Hostel Design ANa Mata Suites AGuest Urban São Paulo State Highlights 1 Ubatuba Seeking out deserted beaches where mountains meet the sea along the lush and lovely Litoral Norte. 2 São Paulo City Overwhelming yourself with cuisine, culture, coffee and chaos in one of the world’s largest cities. 3 Pousada Picinguaba Hiding away amid lush rainforest and refined tropical luxury in an idyllic fishing village inside Parque Estadual Serra do Mar. 4 Farol Santander Gawking at the sheer endlessness of São Paulo city’s eye-popping skyline from the top of this former bank building. 5 Ilhabela Escaping to São Paulo’s idyllic island getaway for the rich and famous. 6 Campos do Jordão Immersing yourself in the Alpine wonderland of Brazil’s highest city. 7 Iporanga Caving in the pristine Brazilian Atlantic Forest in Parque Estadual do Alto do Ribeira. 8 Ilha do Cardoso Going wet and wild in this seldom-visited, off-the-grid island. 8Getting There & Around The state’s capital, São Paulo city, is Brazil’s principal hub for international travel. Dozens of airlines from North America, Europe and Asia have direct international services to São Paulo’s newish GRU Airport. There are direct long-distance bus services from neighboring countries and destinations across Brazil from Terminal Rodoviária do Tietê, Latin America’s largest bus terminal.

…

The tiny village, Barra do Superagüi, is a rustic collage of colorful wooden homes connected by cement walkways traversing swampy mangroves. It’s the kind of place where Simba, the local yellow lab, greets boats on arrival and local restaurants sometimes only open with enough advance notice to fish for your meal. It’s not for everybody, but disappearing here for a day or two carries a certain type of off-the-grid appeal. Boats run to Parque Nacional do Superagüi (R$50 return, one hour) at 3pm Monday to Saturday from Paranaguá, returning from Superagüi at 7am – but always check ahead as transportation here is iffy and fluid. You can also make private transportation arrangements with tour agents and pousadas in Paranaguá or Ilha do Mel. 6Drinking & Nightlife Encantadas draws a beach party scene fueled by acoustic guitar–wielding wanderers, especially in summer, and Shams caters to a bar crowd with live music.

pages: 542 words: 161,731

Alone Together
by Sherry Turkle
Published 11 Jan 2011

Diane, in the company of programs, feels herself “a master of the universe.” Yet, she is only powerful enough to see herself as a “maximizing machine” that responds to what the network throws at her. She and her husband have decided they should take a vacation. She plans to tell her colleagues that she is going to be “off the grid” for two weeks, but Diane keeps putting off her announcement. She doesn’t know how it will be taken. The norm in the museum is that it is fine to take time off for vacations but not to go offline during them. So, a vacation usually means working from someplace picturesque. Indeed, advertisements for wireless networks routinely feature a handsome man or beautiful woman sitting on a beach.

pages: 467 words: 503

The omnivore's dilemma: a natural history of four meals
by Michael Pollan
Published 15 Dec 2006

At dinner I mentioned that this was probably the all-time most local meal I'd ever eaten. Teresa joked that if Joel and Daniel could just figure out how to mill paper towels and toilet paper from the trees on the farm, she'd never have to go to the supermarket. It was true: We were eating almost completely off the grid. I realized that the sort of agriculture practiced at Polyface was very much of a piece with the sort of life the Salatins led. They had largely detached their household from industrial civilization, and not just by eating from land that had virtually no economic or ecological ties to what Joel variously called "the empire," "the establishment," and "Wall Street."

Croatia
by Anja Mutic and Vesna Maric
Published 1 Apr 2013

Hvar (Click here)KELLY CHENG TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY / GETTY IMAGES © Croatia’s Brand of Tourism Despite its reputation as Europe’s vacation hot spot, Croatia hasn’t given in to mass tourism. The ‘Mediterranean As It Once Was’ motto of Croatia’s tourist board may be overblown in popular destinations where development has taken a firm hold, but pockets of authentic culture can be found and there’s still plenty to discover off the grid. This country in transition, on the brink between Mitteleuropa and Mediterranean, offers good news for visitors on all budgets: Croatia is as diverse as its landscapes. Some of the more popular Adriatic locales come with hefty price tags in the summer months, while continental Croatia costs a fraction of what you’ll pay on the coast.

Lonely Planet Nicaragua (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Alex Egerton and Greg Benchwick
Published 30 Jun 2013

El Club LOUNGE OFFLINE MAP (www.elclub-nicaragua.com; Calle La Libertad, Parque Central, 3c O; cover US$2-5; Thu-Sat) A stylish and sophisticated venue hosting visiting DJs on a regular basis. This seems to be the preferred venue for the visiting A-list crowd from Managua – dress to impress. It has a US$8 open bar some nights. OFF THE GRID IN GRANADA Tired of bumping into tour groups? Here are some places that might help you feel just that little bit special… Antigüo Hospital (Av Arellano, Iglesia Xalteva 1c O, 1½c N) It is currently contemplating a renovation, so you aren’t allowed to enter. But from the main street, photographers will love the crumbling colonial feel of this hospital in ruins.

pages: 505 words: 161,581

The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley
by Jimmy Soni
Published 22 Feb 2022

My friends David and Kate Heilbroner offered their home when I needed to do the “cabin in the woods” routine, and David also fired up my enthusiasm for the project with his own passion for documentary storytelling and larger-than-life characters. Shir and Marnie Nir offered up their home when I needed another stretch off the grid to edit and revise, and they also provided just the right amount of hugs, lively conversations, and mac and cheese. To Chris Wilson, Andy Youmans, Leah Feygin, Bentley Meeker, Nadia Rawls, Brandon Kleinman, Katie Boyle, Parker Briden, Jacob Hawkins, Arthur Chan, Kevin Currie, Bryan Wish, Enna Eskin, Steve Veres, Mike Martoccio, Matt Gledhill, Matt Hoffman, Tom Buchanan, Miho Kubagawa, Trisha Bailey, Nikki Arkin, Alex Levy, Bronwyn Lewis, Kaj Larsen, Meagan Kirkpatrick, and Benjamin Hardy, thanks for the many, many words of encouragement (and for putting up with my many, many absences).

pages: 741 words: 164,057

Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing
by Kevin Davies
Published 5 Oct 2020

It’s a much more down-to-earth affair, followed by a celebratory dinner at Ken’s House of Pancakes.8 It was just another whistle-stop engagement for the scientist who, perhaps more than anyone, embodies CRISPR—the woman who literally has DNA in her name. * * * In the summer of 2017, U.S. senator Lamar Alexander was enjoying a fishing vacation in Canada, off the grid and only listening to the radio for the weather forecast. One day however, he happened to catch a story about CRISPR. We should have a hearing on this, he thought to himself. Luckily, as the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee, that was his prerogative.9 After running between U.S.

pages: 561 words: 163,916

The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality
by Blake J. Harris
Published 19 Feb 2019

I keep caffeine in my glovebox. Just in case. Emergency road trip fuel.” “You’re an interesting guy, Palmer Luckey.” Luckey smiled and took a swig of his chocolate. “All right, Palmer,” Iribe began, trying not to begin too firmly. “It’s been a week . . . Luckey apologized for the delay and for occasionally going “off the grid.” “That’s okay,” Iribe explained. “I get it. But you officially turned down Sony, right?” This was correct, technically speaking. On June 20, Luckey had emailed Sony to say, “Sorry to bow out at this stage, but I was made an offer I could not refuse by people who can help me develop my current HMD on my own.”

pages: 1,181 words: 163,692

Lonely Planet Wales (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet
Published 17 Apr 2017

The museum is positioned in verdant countryside at Drefach Felindre, 3.5 miles east of Newcastle Emlyn, signposted from the A484. 4Sleeping & Eating oLarkhill TipisCAMPGROUND££ (%01559-3715881; www.larkhilltipisandyurts.co.uk; Cwmduad; tents from £70)S Puffed-up American turkeys escort guests around the fairy-lit grounds of this off-the-grid glamping site. Five different styles of tent are available, each from a different part of the world, and all are comfortably furnished with their own beds, gas cookers and wood fires. It's in a remote spot, 7 miles southeast of Newcastle Emlyn. Gwesty'r Emlyn HotelHOTEL££ (%01239-710317; www.gwestyremlynhotel.co.uk; Bridge St; s/d from £80/120; pW) This 300-year-old coaching inn has been transformed into a slick little hotel with well-presented rooms, a restaurant and a 'fitness suite', with gym equipment, a spa pool and a sauna.

pages: 589 words: 167,680

The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism
by Steve Kornacki
Published 1 Oct 2018

A midterm election drubbing hadn’t taken away the presidential bully pulpit, and in this moment of tragedy, Clinton was putting it to use in a way that inspired even his critics. Then, the next day, he got political. McVeigh and Nichols had emerged from a loose movement of vehemently antigovernment survivalists. They tended to live off the grid, often heavily armed, convinced the forces of the federal government were scheming to deprive them of their freedom. Two events of the recent past had hardened their resolve. In the summer of 1992, federal marshals attempted to serve a warrant to survivalist Randy Weaver, holed up on his property in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

Lonely Planet Sri Lanka
by Lonely Planet

Just after the town of Vakarai and then the Panichchankeni bridge, at the 58km post, turn towards the ocean and drive 2.5km to the idyllic and untrammelled beach. Should you decide to stay here (and who wouldn't?), Tranquility Coral Cottages ( GOOGLE MAP ; %011-262 5404, 077 735 4894; www.tccvakarai.com; Sallithievu Rd, Panichchankeni, Vakarai; cottages incl meals per person from Rs 8000) offers an unplugged, off-the-grid beach experience. Here you can enjoy empty white sands, explore the Panichchankeni lagoon, snorkel the reefs around Sallithievu (an islet connected by a sandbar to the mainland) and taste home-style cooking. The wooden cottages are spacious, but perhaps a little pricey for true Robinson Crusoes.

pages: 558 words: 175,965

When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach
by Ashlee Vance
Published 8 May 2023

“If he told me to pull my pants down and hump the rocket, I’d do it because it must be important.” As I observed the Astra crew, it became clear that the lead-up to a rocket launch was not sexy or exhilarating; it looked a lot more like drudgery. Add in the remote location and the peculiarities of lodge life, and the drudgery seemed that much worse. The lodge was off the grid and ran on generators fed by a massive fuel tank outside. So you would get back after a long day at the range and be haunted by a constant dull buzz. The soft-serve ice cream machine, which had seemed like a blessing early in the campaign, turned into pure evil because it buzzed ever louder and plagued every mealtime conversation.

pages: 547 words: 173,909

Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World
by Nick Bostrom
Published 26 Mar 2024

While contemporary neurotechnology does not yet give us the general ability to easily make ourselves strongly motivated to pursue any arbitrary goal, people do quite frequently resort to the other ways of generating artificial purpose. People challenge themselves by placing themselves in situations in which they are strongly motivated to push their bodies and minds to the limit, for example by going “off the grid” and arranging things in such a manner that they have no other way, other than via their own efforts, to achieve their goal of surviving and getting out intact. Same with the rock climber who is dangling halfway up a vertical wall: whatever motivational problems might have been plaguing them in their ordinary life have all vanished.

pages: 624 words: 180,416

For the Win
by Cory Doctorow
Published 11 May 2010

“Calm down for a sec and listen to me, OK?” Kettlewell looked at him and sighed. “Go ahead.” “There are more than a billion squatters worldwide. San Francisco has been giving out tents and shopping carts ever since they ran out of shelter beds in the nineties. From Copenhagen to Capetown, there are more and more people who are going off the grid, often in the middle of cities.” Suzanne nodded. “They farm Detroit, in the ruins of old buildings. Raise crops and sell them. Chickens, too. Even pigs.” “There’s something there. These people have money, like I said. They buy and sell in the stream of commerce. They often have to buy at a premium because the services and goods available to them are limited—think of how a homeless person can’t take advantage of bulk-packaged perishables because she doesn’t have a fridge.

pages: 348 words: 185,704

Matter
by Iain M. Banks
Published 14 Jan 2011

In one of the two small lounges that was all its rather miserable allocation of accommodation could afford, the ship’s avatoid was explaining to the SC agent Anaplian the extent to which theLiveware Problem would be limited in its field of operations if it had actually to enter Sursamen. It still hoped, rather fervently, this would not be necessary. “It’s a hypersphere. In fact, it’s a series of sixteen hyper-spheres,” the avatoid Hippinse told the woman. “Four D; I can no easier jump into it than an ordinary, non-HS-capable ship can. I can’t even gain any traction off the Grid because it’ll cut me off from that too. Didn’t you know this?” the avatoid said, looking puzzled. “It’s their strength, it’s how the heat’s managed, how the opacity comes about.” “I knew Shellworlds were four-dimensional,” Anaplian admitted, frowning. It was one of those things that she’d learned only long after leaving the place.

pages: 1,007 words: 181,911

The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 1 Jan 2012

But how could Bob let them use it and not have his own food spoil? He couldn’t. And that’s when, fortunately for Bob and everyone else, the power went back on. All of my refrigerated food went into the garbage, but a third of my frozen food was still usable. At the end of the day, a mere four blocks had been off the grid for less than 12 hours. It wasn’t an “event,” let alone an emergency, and I’d lost nearly every ounce of food, not to mention all of my potable water. What if it had been 24 hours? 48 hours? 72 hours? I ordered the Honda EU2000i. EVENT 2: NERT One fair-weather afternoon, I received the following e-mail from a friend: My girlfriend and I will be attending six NERT (Neighborhood Emergency Response Team) classes in the Marina from 6:30–9:30 p.m. on Mondays starting next week.

pages: 1,881 words: 178,824

HTML5 Canvas
by Steve Fulton and Jeff Fulton
Published 2 May 2013

The rest of the grid is simply road tiles on which the tanks move. The player must get to the goal object without running into any walls or any of the enemy tanks. On each turn, the player and all enemy tanks move a single space (tile) on the grid. Neither the player nor the enemy tanks can move off the grid edges. If the player runs into a wall tile or an enemy tank, his game is over. If an enemy tank runs into a wall or another tank, it is destroyed and removed from the game board. If an enemy tank runs into the player tank, it and the player are destroyed. If the player hits the goal tile without an enemy tank also hitting the tile on the same turn, the player wins.

Lonely Planet Colombia (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Alex Egerton , Tom Masters and Kevin Raub
Published 30 Jun 2015

If you are accosted by robbers, it is best to give them what they are after, but try to play it cool and don't rush to hand them all your valuables at once – they may well be satisfied with just your decoy wad. Don't try to escape or struggle – your chances are slim, and people have been murdered for pocket change. Don't count on any help from passersby. PRACTICAL TIPS Avoid wandering off the grid, especially without checking the security situation on the ground. Be cautious when using ATMs after dark, avoid doing so entirely on deserted streets. Carry a quickly accessible, rolled bundle of small notes in case of robbery. Avoid drug tourism. Be very wary of drinks or cigarettes offered by strangers or new 'friends.'

May We Be Forgiven
by A. M. Homes
Published 14 Jun 2012

“It’s like a national park.” “We call it a campus,” Rosenblatt says. A “campus” complete with a bowling alley, golf, and tennis. All of it enough to make insanity look appealing. Tessie loves the tour; she pees and poops multiple times. Rosenblatt ends the tour at a part of the estate slightly off the grid—a long, low building that looks like an old upstate hunters’ motel. “We use this building for a variety of purposes, including as housing for our guests. If security seems a little high, you’re not seeing things. We currently have a former presidential hopeful in-house. We need to be extra cautious: paparazzi have been known to sneak through the woods and so on.”

pages: 704 words: 182,312

This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World: A Practitioners' Handbook
by Marc Stickdorn , Markus Edgar Hormess , Adam Lawrence and Jakob Schneider
Published 12 Jan 2018

He also saw the potential of combining two seemingly unrelated trends: a steep cost decrease for photovoltaic (PV) solar, and the radical uptake of mobile networks and phones in the developing world. Building on that, the initial business idea was quickly formulated: offer PV solar systems to people living off the grid, and let them pay for it over time via SMS. Rather than working on a 50-page investor’s deck, the first action was building a tangible prototype that illustrated the concept, which was used to get rich feedback and find partners to collaborate with. The prototype at this point was a light bulb and a solar panel connected to microchip with an embedded SIM card.

pages: 611 words: 188,732

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)
by Adam Fisher
Published 9 Jul 2018

The Macintosh group was a classic skunkworks operation: a breakaway engineering team tasked with the research and development of an alternate future. It’s the engineering equivalent of a special forces unit being sent on a long-range reconnaissance mission. Randy Wigginton: We had just gone through the horrible, abysmal Apple III. And Lisa just appeared to be going nowhere. So that’s why we sort of went off the grid. We were our own ragtag group of people, and you know we just wanted to go off and do our own thing. Dan Kottke: There was this whole thing that Apple was becoming bureaucratic, and so we were the renegade pirates. Bruce Horn: Steve said, “We’d rather be pirates than join the Navy.” Right? We’d rather steal great things than be bureaucratic and lockstep and follow the rules.

Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima
by James Mahaffey
Published 15 Feb 2015

There was one common weakness, however, for all the safety systems: they all depended on electricity. Each valve in the complex maze of piping required electricity to open or close it.268 If the plant scrams in an emergency, then it stops providing electrical power to itself. In this condition, it switches to external power off the grid or to a cross-wired connection to the reactor next door. If no power is available on the power-plant site or from the area outside the plant, then each reactor has two emergency diesel-powered generators that come on automatically. Either generator is capable of handling the electrical needs of the entire plant, in case one breaks down or will not start.

pages: 583 words: 182,990

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Published 5 Oct 2020

“We probably should have been guarding you more closely,” he said when she was done. “It was close enough, as it turned out. Besides, I think you offered it once, but I said no. I hate that kind of thing.” “Even so. It might be just for a while. They’ll probably pick this guy up soon.” “I’m not so sure.” “It’s hard to stay off the grid for long.” “But not impossible.” “No,” he admitted. “Not impossible.” She shifted back into the bench, shuddered. Really things were fucked. She needed to sleep. But here they were. “Look,” she said, thinking it over. “You grew up in Nepal, right? And I grew up in Ireland. In both places there was a lot of political violence.

California
by Sara Benson
Published 15 Oct 2010

Great barbecued oysters and hand-cut fries. Jasper O’Farrell’s ( 707-823-1389; 6957 Sebastopol Ave) There’s live music Friday and Saturday at this Irish-style bar with billiards. Hardcore Espresso ( 707-823-7588; 1798 Gravenstein Hwy S; 6am-7pm) Meet local hippies and art freaks over coffee and smoothies at this classic Nor-Cal off-the-grid, indoor-outdoor coffeehouse that’s essentially a corrugated-metal-roofed shack surrounded by umbrella tables. The organic coffee is the town’s best. Coffee Catz ( 707-829-6600; 6761 Sebastopol Ave; 7am-10pm Fri & Sat, to 6pm Sun-Thu) This roastery and café, east of downtown in a historic rail barn (Gravenstein Station), hosts acoustic music Thursday to Sunday; open mic is Wednesday

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Guests can join free yoga classes on Friday and Saturday mornings. Sequoia High Sierra Camp ( 866-654-2877; www.sequoiahighsierracamp.com; s/d room without bath incl all meals $250/300; mid-Jun–early Oct) Hike a mile in for gourmet meals and comfy beds in the high country at this luxury tent-cabin oasis at 8200ft. Opened in 2006, this off-the-grid and all-inclusive resort is nirvana for active, sociable people who don’t think ‘luxury camping’ is an oxymoron. A rare plot of private land in the thick of the national forest, it’s a great base for hiking, and the camp does a twice-weekly shuttle from Cedar Grove for one-way hikes to Kings Canyon.

pages: 420 words: 219,075

Frommer's New Mexico
by Lesley S. King
Published 2 Jan 1999

It’s wedged between the towering peaks of the Rocky Mountains and the plunging chasm of the Rio Grande Gorge. 8 Located about 70 miles north of Santa Fe, this town of 5,000 residents combines 1960s hippiedom (thanks to communes set up in the hills back then) with the ancient culture of Taos Pueblo (some people still live without electricity and running water, as their ancestors did 1,000 years ago). It can be an odd place, where some completely eschew materialism and live “off the grid” in half-underground houses called earth ships. But there are plenty of more mainstream attractions as well—Taos boasts some of the best restaurants in the state, a hot and funky arts scene, and incredible outdoors action, including world-class skiing. Its history is rich. Throughout the Taos valley, ruins and artifacts attest to a Native American presence dating back 5,000 years.

pages: 850 words: 224,533

The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World
by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro
Published 11 Sep 2017

It had taken the Northumberland nearly three months to reach St. Helena. Even today, the island lacks an airport, ATMs, businesses that accept credit cards, cell phone towers, or high-speed Internet.39 Security considerations favored St. Helena. Not only was there no escape, but the island was so far off the grid that Napoleon would languish in obscurity until he was forgotten. But legal concerns loomed large as well. Lord Liverpool, the British prime minister, confided to Castlereagh, his foreign minister, that detaining Napoleon in England would be awkward. “We are all decidedly of opinion that it would not answer to confine him in this country.

pages: 879 words: 233,093

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis
by Jeremy Rifkin
Published 31 Dec 2009

Since the true price of electricity on the grid varies during any twenty-four-hour period, moment-to-moment energy information opens the door to “dynamic pricing,” allowing consumers to increase or drop their energy use automatically, depending upon the price of electricity on the grid. Up-to-the-moment pricing also allows local minigrid producers of energy to either sell energy back to the grid or go off the grid altogether. The smart intergrid will not only give end users more power over their energy choices, but it also creates new energy efficiencies in the distribution of electricity. The intergrid makes possible a broad redistribution of power. Today’s centralized, top-down flow of energy becomes increasingly obsolete.

Lonely Planet Mexico
by John Noble , Kate Armstrong , Greg Benchwick , Nate Cavalieri , Gregor Clark , John Hecht , Beth Kohn , Emily Matchar , Freda Moon and Ellee Thalheimer
Published 2 Jan 1992

The best rooms have ocean views and air-con. Top End To get away from it all amid considerable luxury, take a short water-taxi ride to Isla de Navidad, just across the lagoon from Barra. CocoCabañas ( 100-04-41, from the US 281-205-4100; www.ecocabanas.com; Isla de Navidad; d/tr/q M$1300/1425/1550; ) Get off the grid and into a chic beach hut at this off-the-beaten-path resort. With its green wetland water-treatment system and impressive solar array, which powers the entire inn, you feel good about spending your pesos at this pioneering green lodging – a rarity in Mexico. The four two-story wood and adobe cabañas – each sleeping two couples comfortably – afford brilliant sea views through large windows.

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Taxis operating on a colectivo basis wait outside Plaza Madero mall on Guamuchil in La Crucecita, but they’re not very frequent. They charge M$3 per person to Santa Cruz and M$5 to Tangolunda. Return to beginning of chapter BARRA DE LA CRUZ 958 / pop 750 This well-tended Chontal village, about 20km east of Huatulco, offers travelers a chance to get off the grid and catch some amazing waves. The right-hand point break, off the beach 1.5km from the rustic village, gets up to a double overhead and is long and fast. In short, it’s serious, and has been the site of international competition. Good swells for experienced surfers are frequent from March to October and generally at their best in June and July.

pages: 903 words: 235,753

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty
by Benjamin H. Bratton
Published 19 Feb 2016

But the Earth layer is not only where energy is monitored; it also the source and provisioner of the brute energy to run the other layers of The Stack; it is the bedrock stratum where energy economies produce the networkable electrons necessary to animate the machines above, fabricated in steel, cement, plastic, silicon, and flesh. Regardless of its source (solar, nuclear, compressed natural gas, wind, hydrothermal, coal) or the network architecture of its industrial generation and distribution (from massively centralized, like a nuclear fission power plant, to informal and decentralized, like an off-the-grid solar panel cluster), energy dictates the variability of human settlements and their ultimate risks, costs, and benefits. Our design interest therefore is not aligned with a notional sustainability conceived as conservative homeostasis, but with the force routes of a disequilibrium that reverberate through matter and transform the world in creative rhythms, slow and fast, including especially its plastics and fleshes.

Global Catastrophic Risks
by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic
Published 2 Jul 2008

Combined with the imagined significance of the turn of the Millennium, Christian millennialists saw the crisis as a portent of the EndTimes (Schaefer, 2004), and secular apocalyptics bought emergency generators, guns and food in anticipation of a prolonged social collapse (CNN, 1 998; Kellner, 1 999; Tapia, 2003) . Some anti-technology Y2K apocalyptics argued for widespread technological relinquishment - getting off the grid and returning to a nineteenth century lifestyle. The date 1 January 2000 was as unremarkable as all predicted millennia! dates have been, but in this case, many analysts believe potential catastrophes were averted due to the proactive action from governments, corporations, and individual consumers ( S pecial Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, 2000), motivated in part by millennia!

Lonely Planet Scotland
by Lonely Planet

The main reasons for visiting are to climb the remote 1020m peak of Ladhar Bheinn (laar-ven), which affords some of the west coast's finest views, or just to enjoy the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world. There are no shops, no TV and no mobile-phone reception (although there is internet access); electricity is provided by a private hydroelectric scheme – truly 'off the grid' living! No road penetrates this wilderness of rugged hills – Inverie, its sole village, can only be reached by ferry from Mallaig, or on foot from the remote road's end at Kinloch Hourn (a tough 16-mile hike). A 4WD track leads northwest from Inverie for 7 miles to the outposts of Doune and Airor, which offer even more remote accommodation options.

pages: 885 words: 238,165

The Rough Guide to Chile & Easter Island (Travel Guide with Free eBook)
by Rough Guides
Published 15 Mar 2023

Around 4km east of Cochamó, a dirt road branches off the main Cochamó–Puelo road and runs for 6km to the start of the horse track that cuts through the valley. Follow it for long enough, and you will reach the Argentinian border. Thirteen kilometres along the track is LA JUNTA, a cluster of five campsites, plus two rustic lodges, surrounded by a soaring amphitheatre of granite towers. From November to April, this off-the-grid destination attracts thousands of hikers, as well as rock climbers who come to take on such world-famous walls as El Monstruo, Trinidad, and Anfiteatro. Trekking in the Cochamó valley With the temperate rainforest’s gnarly trees “clothed” in lichen, towering alerces and granite mountains rising above the forest, it’s easy to see how the Cochamó Valley acquired its “Yosemite of the South” moniker.

Scotland Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

The main reasons for visiting are to climb the remote 1020m peak of Ladhar Bheinn ( laar -ven), which affords some of the west coast’s finest views, or just to enjoy the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world. There are no shops, no TV and no mobile-phone reception (although there is internet access); electricity is provided by a private hydroelectric scheme – truly ‘off the grid’ living! For more information and full accommodation listings, see www.knoydart.org. Sleeping & Eating Knoydart Lodge B&B ££ ( 01687-460129; www.knoydartlodge.co.uk; Inverie; s/d £55/80; ) This must be some of the most spacious and luxurious B&B accommodation on the whole west coast, let alone in Knoydart – on offer are large, stylish bedrooms in a fantastic, modern timber-built lodge reminiscent of an Alpine chalet.

Cuba Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Holguín Sights 1 Plaza de la Revolución F1 Tomb of Calixto García (see 1) Sleeping 2 Don Santiago C4 3 Hotel Pernik F2 4'La Palma' – Enrique R Interián SalermoA1 5 Villa Janeth B3 6 Villa Liba A1 Eating 7 Agropecuario C4 8 Agropecuario E3 9 El Ciruelo A3 10 Peso Stalls E3 11 Restaurante 1910 B3 Taberna Pancho (see 3) Entertainment Disco Havana Club (see 3) 12 Estadio General Calixto García E2 Sights Holguín is known, somewhat euphemistically, as the ‘city of parks’ (they’re more like squares). Base yourself around the four central squares and you’ll see most of what’s on offer. No walk is complete without a climb up to La Loma de la Cruz – a little off the grid, but well worth the detour. Museo de Historia Provincial MUSEUM OFFLINE MAP GOOGLE MAP (Frexes No 198; admission CUC$1; 8am-4:30pm Tue-Sat, to noon Sun) Now a national monument, the building on the northern side of Parque Calixto García was constructed between 1860 and 1868 and used as a Spanish army barracks during the independence wars.

pages: 918 words: 257,605

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
by Shoshana Zuboff
Published 15 Jan 2019

Street View’s fleet of surveillance-gathering tools had been augmented to include a wearable backpack, a three-wheeled pedicab, a snowmobile, and a trolley, all of which were designed to capture places that Street View cars could not traverse. Tourist boards and nonprofits were offered the use of the company’s Trekker equipment (the backpack camera) to “collect views of remote and unique places” that were, literally and figuratively, “off the grid.”65 What Google couldn’t build, it bought. In 2013 the corporation won a reported bidding war with Facebook for Israeli social mapping startup Waze, a firm that pioneered community-sourced real-time traffic information. In 2014 it acquired real-time satellite imaging startup Skybox just as the US Department of Commerce lifted restrictions on high-resolution satellite imagery.

Coastal California Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Taylor Maid FarmsCAFE ( GOOGLE MAP ; %707-634-7129; www.taylormaidfarms.com; 6790 McKinley St, Barlow; h6:30am-6pm Sun-Thu, to 7pm Fri, 7am-7pm Sat)S Choose your brew method (drip, press etc) at this third-wave coffeehouse that roasts its own organic beans. Exceptional seasonal drinks include lavender lattes. Hardcore EspressoCAFE ( GOOGLE MAP ; %707-823-7588; 81 Bloomfield Rd; h5am-7pm Mon-Fri, 6am-7pm Sat & Sun; W)S Meet local hippies and artists over coffee and smoothies at this classic NorCal, off-the-grid, indoor-outdoor coffeehouse, south of downtown, that’s essentially a corrugated-metal-roofed shack surrounded by umbrella tables. Jasper O’Farrell’sBAR ( GOOGLE MAP ; %707-829-2062; 6957 Sebastopol Ave; hnoon-2am) Busy bar with billiards and live music most nights; good drink specials. 7Shopping Antique shops line Gravenstein Hwy S toward Hwy 101.

pages: 993 words: 318,161

Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell
by Neal Stephenson
Published 3 Jun 2019

Yesterday, when he’d reached the site of the camp, he’d changed in the backseat of his Tesla and stashed the modern garb in a duffel bag in the trunk of his car. But that duffel bag was now in the plane’s luggage compartment, unreachable until they landed. A meme cropped up claiming that Moab had actually gone off the grid two days earlier as most of its residents had fallen victim to an explosively contagious plague that had presumably escaped from a nearby bioweapons facility, and that the president had made the decision to sterilize the whole town with a nuke. The roadblocks on the surrounding highways weren’t there to prevent curiosity-seekers from getting in.

pages: 675 words: 344,555

Frommer's Hawaii 2009
by Jeanette Foster
Published 2 Jan 2008

THE HAMAKUA COAST In addition to those listed below, another B&B in this area, in Ahualoa, a mountain community a short drive from Waipio, is Mountain Meadow Ranch Bed & Breakfast, 46–3895 Kapuna Rd., Honokaa, HI 96727 (& 808/775-9376; www.mountain meadowranch.com), offering both a private cottage ($135 for four) and rooms in a house ($95 double). Note: You’ll find the following accommodations on the map on p. 273. EXPENSIVE Waianuhea Finds Located in the rural rolling hills above Honokaa, totally off the grid, and nestled in seven beautifully landscaped acres (with a lily pond, fruit trees, a vegetable garden, and a bucolic horse pasture) lies this oasis of luxury and relaxation. Just off a narrow country road, the two-story inn features five posh guest rooms with soaking tubs, gas or wood stoves, phones, and flatscreen satellite TVs, all on photovoltaic solar power.

pages: 1,318 words: 403,894

Reamde
by Neal Stephenson
Published 19 Sep 2011

The journey back was therefore carried out in a tortoise-and-hare mode, the ATV running forward for a few hundred yards and then idling along while Jake and Olivia caught up with them. During these pauses, John would try to communicate with persons not present. The people who lived around Prohibition Crick had gone there specifically to get off the grid, and so excellent phone reception was not among their priorities. They were not the sort to look benignly on phone company technicians crawling around the neighborhood hiding cables under the ground and setting up mysterious antennas to bathe every cubic inch of their living space with encoded emanations.

pages: 1,540 words: 400,759

Fodor's California 2014
by Fodor's
Published 5 Nov 2013

Locals know this plaza for two things: the farmers’ market held on Wednesdays and Sundays—cheap and earthy to the Ferry Building’s pricey and beautiful—and the many homeless people, a consistent presence despite numerous efforts by the city to shunt them aside. Brick pillars listing various nations and the dates of their admittance into the United Nations line the plaza, and its floor is inscribed with the goals and philosophy of the United Nations Charter, which was signed at the War Memorial Opera House in 1945. The food-truck gathering Off the Grid (offthegridsf.com) livens up lunchtime on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with several vendors selling gourmet foods. | Fulton St. between Hyde and Market Sts. | 94102 Nob Hill and Russian Hill In place of the quirky charm and cultural diversity that mark other San Francisco neighborhoods, Nob Hill exudes history and good breeding.

Central America
by Carolyn McCarthy , Greg Benchwick , Joshua Samuel Brown , Alex Egerton , Matthew Firestone , Kevin Raub , Tom Spurling and Lucas Vidgen
Published 2 Jan 2001

Barton Creek Outpost ( 662-4797; www.bartoncreekoutpost.com; per person BZ$10) In a country full of gorgeous places, this one shines. Nestled in a river bend about 200m from the Barton Creek Cave (see opposite page), it’s the sort of place you come for a day and stay for a week. Good simple meals are available. Macaw Bank Jungle Lodge ( 608-4825; www.macawbankjunglelodge.com; cabañas BZ$170-250) Beautiful, off the grid and off the beaten path, Macaw Bank is 8 miles (13km) from San Ignacio nature reserve and has jungle trails, and an onsite restaurant, and even its own unexcavated Maya ruin. The lodge offers river access to the Belize Botanical Garden and river tubing. Crystal Paradise ( 820-4014; www.crystalparadise.com; 1st person incl breakfast & dinner BZ$190, each additional person BZ$70) Beautiful thatched-roof double, triple and family-sized palapas are spread out across 21 lush acres (8.5 hectares) filled with tropical fruit trees.

Germany Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Most popular children’s names: Mia and Ben In 2011, following the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, Germany became the first industrial nation to completely opt out of nuclear power, immediately shutting down the eight oldest of its 17 reactors. The same year, the Bundestag passed legislation that will see the remaining nine plants go off the grid by 2022. The government expects wind farms, solar arrays and other nonpolluting power producers will pick up the slack. Land of Immigration Some 15 million people living in Germany have an immigrant background (foreign born or have at least one immigrant parent), accounting for about 18% of the total population.

Caribbean Islands
by Lonely Planet

Police ( 242-368-2626, 919; Coakley Town) Post office (Coakley Town) Royal Bank of Canada (Calabash Bay; 9:30am-3:30pm Wed) Has an ATM. MANGROVE CAY & SOUTH ANDROS The most rural and isolated chunk of the Andros, Mangrove Cay has forests, beaches and blue holes galore. If you’re looking to drop off the grid for a while, this is the place. Virtually bypassed by tourists, South Andros has superb bonefishing and some extraordinary silver-and-pink beaches. Seascape Inn CABANA RESORT $ ( 242-369-0342; www.seascapeinn.com; Mangrove Cay; cabanas incl breakfast BS$159; ) New Yorkers Mickey and Joan McGowan escaped city life to run this Swiss Family Robinson–like colony of beach cabanas, and their friendliness has earned them a loyal following.

pages: 3,292 words: 537,795

Lonely Planet China (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet and Shawn Low
Published 1 Apr 2015

Southern Silk Road The Silk Road east of Kashgar splits into two threads in the face of the Taklamakan Desert, the second-largest sandy desert in the world. The northern thread follows the modern road and railway to Kuqa and Turpan. The southern road charts a more remote course between desert sands and the towering Pamir and Kunlun mountain ranges. This off-the-grid journey takes you far into the modern Uighur heartland, as well as deep into the ancient multi-ethic heritage of the region. You're as likely to come across a centuries-old tiled mosque as the ruins of a Buddhist pagoda from the 4th century. It’s possible to visit the southern towns as a multiday trip from Kashgar before crossing the Taklamakan Desert to Urumqi, or as part of a rugged backdoor route into Tibet or Qinghai.