Ha, that's actually how I feel about Thanksgiving. I see it more as a holiday for being grateful for things in my life and eating food with family. The historical connotations of the holiday have very little to do with it for me, and unlike the Fourth there are a lot less decorations that celebrate the historicity of the holiday. For instance, unless you're attending a kid's play or something there's very little Pilgrim stuff, and luckily there's no overt religious themes for people to latch onto.

What things do you think the US does better than anyone else? I'm honestly curious, because other than gun access I can't really think of any.

I used to have cats and I preferred them to be strictly indoors. My reasons for it (in addition to the idea you already outlined that they tend to devastate local rodent/insect/bird/lizard/etc. populations):

• indoor cats are less likely to catch an enrivonmental illness and get sick
• indoor cats are less like to get pregnant/contribute to a pregnancy and create a community of stray cats
• outdoor cats can wander into people's yards/garden and eat plants that are poisonous to them (or dear to the person who tends the garden)
• outdoor cats can also run across people who are allergic to cats
• outdoor cats are more likely to be run over, terrorized by a loose dog, injured in a cat fight, stolen, taken to a shelter without your knowledge, etc.

I had the opinion that if I was "trapping" them inside or permanently locking them up by not letting them go outside, then I shouldn't have cats--which is a large part of the reason I no longer have cats.

Ted Kaczynski seems like what would happen if a STEM-bro tried to become anti-civ. Here and there he has some decent ideas but overall he just seems like a shitty person, not very egalitarian, and not able to comprehend systemic social issues outside of technology or industry. I suppose my view of him is also tainted by the fact that a lot of so-called anarcho-primitivists have latched onto him, and he's very prominent in the anti-civ memes, despite him not really considering himself an anarchist last I heard.

What would you recommend for conditioning and stuff to take? (I doubt I'm currently in any sort of shape to hike for 100s of miles.)

Also, do people take their families on the trail? I'm the main supporter for my household; I love the idea of going and doing this, but unless I can get my rent cancelled for those months and keep my family fed, comfortable, etc. it's not really a possibility for me right now

Not necessarily. I would have considered being a teacher if it weren't for the draconian US school system. But I would have never considered being a cop, even in a "better" system. In a sense, all cops are bad, but not all teachers.

Yeah; I plan on working for another five years or so until I can afford some land and help start a anti-civ inspired community.

I know this was posted as a joke, but as a girl I really struggled with accepting that I was female and I did consider that I was really a boy several times. I think I came to terms with being cis when I considered I mostly hated how society treats women, not necessarily with being a woman (that, and I finally realized its okay to be an androgynous/at times somewhat "masculine" woman).

horse de-wormer won't help you with covid

You know they have Ivermectin designed for human consumption, right?

You probably put this in the wrong forum but thanks for the info regardless

I am on reddit in the same way a cop-hater listens to a police scanner.

If I ever get my shit together, I'll maybe record myself reading it aloud so there can be a free audiobook version available at some point.

I know this thread is a two weeks old now, but: why are you considering moving to the US? (I ask as an American who hates living here.)

This is not an option for everyone (and I am not disabled myself) but the disabled people I know have family or a (working) spouse who lives with them and basically makes enough money for everyone. I really wish this were an option for more disabled people; disabled people should be able to trust that their communities (family, friends, neighbors, mutual aid group, whoever) has their backs so survival isn't even a question.

I can't really answer your questions about how to live without US citizenship while remaining in the US (other than it would be stupid difficult, especially if you don't plan to drop out of society--and I mean completely drop out) but if you want some inspiration, I recently discovered that there have been Americans who renounced their citizenship without gaining another, although nearly all of them were already not living in the US or decided to stop living there. Exceptions to this are Garry Davis and Thomas Jolley. Check the green entries on this list for more details if you're curious.

In fact, the US is one of the very few states that allow people to do this; most places won't let you renounce your citizenship without another already lied up, but of course the US hasn't signed any of the UN conventions on reducing stateless peoples, so technically you can become stateless in the US even though the US State Dept highly discourages it. Also, while I don't agree with your stance on free will (at least not the way you've described it here) and I ultimately think renouncing your US citizenship would do far more harm to your personal situation than any good, I do commend your stance of not wanting to align yourself with the US. I certainly relate to that sentiment, but I also want to remind you that none of us asked to be US citizens, we just happen to be. Of course no one chooses where they are born, and the with exception of people who can successfully immigrate to and naturalize in a country of their choosing, no one deliberately chooses their citizenship status or alignment with any country, even outside the US, so don't make too much of your citizenship and let it feel like you aren't being consistent in your principles or whatever.

I couldn't find Daniel Quinn on the anarchist library. Anyone have a PDF link?

You can download several of Quinn's books here: https://book4you.org/s/daniel%20quinn

Slime mold, perhaps?

I think, as far as initial impressions, I was surprised that this text is from 2011; I'd only really heard about it in the past year or two. That of course puts all the climate change stats from the second chapter in a much more dire frame, since all these are probably much worse now, especially with conservative or outright fascist political leaders in some of the largest polluting counties in the world (Russia, US, China, Brazil, India, etc.)

On page 8 of the plain PDF version, the author states:

Amidst the jolly unreality of this period of ‘Global Resistance’ some could get really carried away: “We have no interest in reforming the World Bank or the IMF; we want it abolished as part of an international anarchist revolution.” Such statements are understandable if written in the drunk-like exuberance one can sometimes feel on having defeated the police, but they are found more commonly. The self-description of one Anarchist Federation reads: “As the capitalist system rules the whole world, its destruction must be complete and worldwide”.

Here, I understand the author's implication that the global orientation is what is critiqued, but it feels very... strange reading this criticism up against the police abolition uprisings that, in some cases, have actually made some US cities (very few, really) reconsider the role of police and the massive budgets they demand. Obviously police departments are not the same as the IMF, but would it be folly to imagine a wider civilizational collapse also taking out the power of global orgs like the IMF? The insurrectionist in me says "no, the IMF won't fall from a single revolutionary movement, but worldwide riots like the ones in the wake of Floyd's death might decrease the power of their hegemony while climate change accelerates it." But perhaps that is the bit of "myth" still in me that the author would suggest I purge.

At any rate, I do appreciate the author calling out the failings of social-movement anarchism, and the dire nature of our situation highlighted in Chapter 2 certainly rings loud and clear here in 2020. I especially like the explanations that even if we haven't reached "peak oil" or even if technology somehow "solves" the worse of climate change, that is not enough to dispel the potential of societal collapse in the near future. I actually wish the author would have expanded on these arguments, since one of the main complaints I hear about anti-civ takes from more traditional anarchists is that we just need more faith that new technologies will increase automation, be more efficient, and somehow also reduce waste and pollution. Well, no--the gears of collapse are already in motion, and this chapter does a great job explaining the extend of the gearing.

My last thoughts are wondering what the author might have thought about non-monocultural agriculture, ways to locally regenerate topsoil (through beans, chestnut trees, and other plants), and foraging/rewilding, but I suppose those are outside the scope of this text, and with it being an anonymous work it's hard to tell what the author's current thoughts about anything are.