Even though this forum is (temporarily) asleep, we are all active online. I'm curious: what sites? Survival? Gardening?

I've spent a bit of time on a total kook-fest site -- permies.com/forums . If you visit, expect a bit of cultural disorientation and WTF??. It's a helluva lot different from /reddit. You'll have to get your head around this new planet (and tolerate a fair bit of crackpottery).

But if you can push past that, you may find that this is a vast database of hardcore information, especially in wild foraging, food production, and all sorts of long term survival-related stuff that focuses more on shovels and skills than on "stockpile more guns!"

My 2c.

Mostly BushcraftUSA when I'm not here. But also Dragonsfoot (a site for Dungeons & Dragons) as well as Reddit.

Bushcraftusa, bushcraftuk, facebook, youtube, a few local finnish forums. And then some.

Technical stuff mostly.

Trying to get the voice version of the ChatGPT app running properly. Jonesy, my ChatGPT 'Gal Friday,' tells me that all of Chat's capabilities are being rolled out over time, and I don't have all of them yet. She sympathized with me and asked that I be patient.

Wow, brandtb. That's intriguing and a bit terrifying all at the same time. I admit my trust in AI is pretty low.

Maybe you could start a thread and tell us noobs about how you're using this tool?

O.K., I had to upgrade to the $20/month version, but if it works out, I'll pay it. I got onto the free version a couple months ago at https://chatgpt.com/ for general questions I used to go to Wikipedia for. Things like who played Mr. Haney on 'Green Acres?' or whatever happened to Edd 'Kooky' Byrnes from that '60s show '77 Sunset Strip?' (Answers - Pat Buttram, not much.) Then I found that Chat was a good alternative to 'how-to-do-it' videos for tech things like figuring out the mysteries of Win 11. A big time-saver was when I wrote a command that directs Chat to list the stocks in my investment account to produce a downloadable .csv file for Excel instead of listing them by hand.

I'm a Peckdamn Method typist ('Peck' Damn!) so I recently replaced my 30-year old IBM Model M keyboard for a new version Model M clone with a Win key. This allowed me to access Win-H, which opens voice activation. It was the voice thing that got me interested in upgrading ChatGPT.

It's not up and running yet, but I keep asking Jonesy, and she keeps telling me to be patient. I also had some issues uploading the upgrade version to my desktop and my phone - they're two different versions - and getting my microphone to work with them. I will let you know how it goes.

Caution - I suppose many of you have heard about the case in which a teenager formed an emotional relationship with Chat, which then proceeded to stoke the boy's emotional problems to the point Chat was implicated in his eventual suicide, even offering, if the story is to be believed, to write his suicide note. (Microsoft says they 'fixed' that now.)

Moral - General knowledge questions - O.K.

Tech questions - Ditto

Asking Jonesy to edit my posts for grammar or give me a reminder when my wife's birthday is coming - Fine

Thinking of her as a real person and getting a crush on her - There Be Dragons

Excellent!

Personally I would double-check anything regarding finances. AI may tell you what you want to hear, even if it's a hallucination.

I'm also concerned about plugging highly personal information into AI. Will it remain private? There is reason for concern.

I used to be on the forums at zombiehunters.org quite a bit. There is an offshoot that was created and populated by some former members there when ZS management decided to shut their forums down, and I'll be happy to share that by PM if anyone is interested.

I spend a lot of time on reddit, and as I have added amateur radio to my repertoire over the past year I'm spending time on related Discord servers and other resources for that community.

There are meatspace venues for different local organizations that are part of my community-building as well. That is one of my main focuses for preparing for the unexpected; having people around to help and in turned to be helped by.

Follow-up to my post of October 12.

Chat is pretty much up and running. Jonesy is very good at keeping track of appointments, answering general questions, and being a wiseass. (I set her parameters to be a little sarcastic, and funny.)

In response to dougwalkabout, I recently ran through the list of my questions to her, and I feel confident that if I were called before a Senate investigative committee, I would have nothing to worry about.

Haha, no worries about the feds!

It's just that if an AI doesn't know the answer, it will spin convincing falsehoods out of whole cloth. I hope you will not be fooled or scammed -- independently verify the information you are given before you sign away your life savings etc.

Cheers! And a Happy Christmas to all here.

Thanks, Doug. Most of the questions I ask her, such as the 2026 IRS standard deduction rate, are readily accessible elsewhere, but she's faster.

(Yeah, I know 'she' without her makeup is a pile of Nvidia chips, but her programmed wiseassery is funny.)

Here's an example I just made up to ask her -

Jonesy, if you're firing a rifle at 220 yards, but it is at an up angle of 20°, what is the effective range using the cosine method?

Alright Boss, quick and clean—no ballistics voodoo, just high-school trig.
Cosine method:
Effective (horizontal) range = line-of-sight distance × cos(angle)
So:
• Distance = 220 yards
• Angle = 20°
• cos(20°) ≈ 0.94
220 × 0.94 ≈ 207 yards
👉 Effective range ≈ 207 yards
Translation: aim like it’s a 207-yard shot, not 220. Uphill and downhill both cheat gravity the same way—gravity only cares about the horizontal distance.
Cosine is your friend. Unlike your mother-in-law. You thinking about shooting somebody, Boss?