That’s why I have notifications off. Once you get to a certain age, people not agreeing with you is their problem.

The joke is the person making the comment. “Ha ha, look how ignorant they are.”

According to its technical definition, yes, a meme is an idea that transmits from person to person. According to its colloquial definition, no, when most people use the term “meme”, they’re referring to a screenshot. In the 2000s, though, it mostly referred specifically to image macros.

Yeah, they existed, but they weren’t mainstream and were mostly just simple image macros. In 2004, if you talked about memes in public, it meant you browsed 4 Chan or Something Awful, which made you a loser to most people.

Came here to say this.

.50 AE and .50 BMG are worlds apart. Hell, even the difference between .45 ACP and .45-70 is pretty big.

Yeah, I think I meant Sodium-ion

It’s pretty easy to cry about bad math, but it’s a lot harder to figure out the right math.

Don’t worry, I’ll try to do it for you again a second time.

Power consumption varies. Use the average monthly power draw from the solar array, let’s assume for demonstration purposes 1,000 kWh/month.

Multiply that by the cost of 1 kWh from the power company, let’s say 20 cents.

In one month, that means you saved $200.

Let’s assume the solar equipment costs $1,000.

The answer is 5 months, or 5,000 kWh.

Sorry, I’ll make sure the free work I do for you is better quality next time.

Based on my experience, which includes asking many, many cops from many, many different departments and jurisdictions all over the US, you’re correct. Every single one has told me that maybe 10 percent of cops practice at the range outside of qualifying, and only about 1 percent practice on a monthly basis or better, and those guys are usually on a SWAT team or high-risk fugitive apprehension task force, were prior military continuing their habitual training, or also moonlight as an armored car driver or some other high-risk private gig.

That’s why I said “most cops”. Training requirements vary wildly from state-to-state, county-to-county, sometimes even department-to-department.

The three biggest cities in the US are Chicago, New York, and LA. Chicago is once a year, New York is twice, LA is four times a year, but only one has to be with duty ammo, the rest are with practice ammo.

I’ve heard of quarterly qualifying for SWAT officers or those on task forces that apprehend high-risk fugitives. But, for the most part, your standard beat cop or highway trooper is gonna be once a year.

It may shock you learn this, but, despite what the media portrays, cops in big cities spend 99% of their time doing rather mundane things like traffic enforcement, domestic disputes, and event security.

It’s slowly becoming more known. The indoor ranges in my area have started installing ventilation systems, banning pregnant women from entry, providing lead-removing soap in the bathrooms, encouraging people to use it, and posting signs about it in the bathrooms.

But still, many people either don’t know or, even worse, know and don’t care because “I ain’t no sissy” or whatever.

Most effects of lead exposure are reversible with time though.

I think an even bigger problem that even more people don’t think about is the fact that leaded gasoline is still used in airplane fuel (avgas). If you fly for a hobby or live under a flight path, you very likely have more lead in your blood than the most avid of shooters.

Indeed. They’re all the rage in China right now (I AM NOT A TANKIE). Some are predicting they’re the “next generation” of battery technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-ion_battery

Have you ever carried a backpack full of books? They’re heavy af. Probably easier to just take over the library and move everything else there.

Then do that instead of asking random people who aren’t in any position to know.

I didn’t say that at all. I said an e-reader is a better choice for people on the move, and books are a better choice for people who intend to stay put.

I didn’t say anything about whether moving or staying is a better choice because that would be an ignorant statement. Without knowing the exact scenario that will occur, it’s impossible to say whether leaving or staying would give the greater chance of survival.

I didn’t say anything about whether books or an e-reader is “superior” overall because that would be an ignorant statement. Like everything else in this world, each choice has pros, cons, and tradeoffs that make one better in certain circumstances, and the other better in different circumstances.

But if making shit up about what people say is what it takes for you to “win” arguments on the internet, more power to you; that reflects a lot more about you than it does me.

Look up Project Farm on YouTube. They’ve done several episodes on solar panels and power banks. Data sheets with their test results are linked in the description of every video.

Nice, that’s a good deal. If the panel just has a single USB, I would guess there’s no internal regulator; it seems to be one of those panels that just gives you the juice and relies on you to manage it. With the price point of that power bank, it doesn’t seem like it would have one either. I’m sure the spec sheet or manual will tell you for sure.

If you don’t care about that cheap power bank, then you can abuse it until it misbehaves then replace it. If you want to protect it, prepare for a bigger bank, or just tinker with your setup, a charge controller for a system your size should be around half the price of your power bank.

Those big Jackery boxes and others claim to not need one. But they’re also like $2,000. A charge controller is like $10. To me, it seems worth the $10, even if it does ultimately do “nothing”.

Lead-acid battery cells can be replaced pretty easily. The hardest part is sourcing the acid. But, if you can find that, replacing the cells can be done in your garage with basic tools and PPE.

Photovoltaic cells can be replaced easily with a soldering iron and most panels are designed to tolerate a certain percentage of the cells failing. Building new cells might be a challenge, but maintaining the ones you already have is trivial, assuming you can source parts for them.

It may not be perfect or indefinite, but it will certainly get you by for a while, very likely long enough to figure out a longer-term solution.

Don’t let “perfect” be the enemy of “good enough”.

don’t charge devices directly from solar power

Unless your power bank has a built in charge controller, this should also include your power bank. At its core, a power bank is nothing more than a big ass lithium ion (or maybe potassium ion, if it’s newer) battery, just like the one in any other device.

Paper books are fucking HEAVY and bulky. They’re only practical if you don’t ever need to take more than one or two anywhere. If you gotta be on the move, the extra equipment to manage the battery is much lighter than the books you would need to carry otherwise.

Another advantage to an e-reader is that I can remove the battery and it’s completely waterproof, as long I completely dry it before the battery goes back in, it can get as wet as I need it to, no problem. Books don’t have that option.

Time, in hours (H), equals average solar kilowatt hours per month (K), multiplied by the price of one kilowatt hour (P), divided by the total cost © of all the purchased components.

H = (K * P) / C

I’m sure if you were patient and dedicated enough, you could approximate each of those numbers using the info OP has already posted and get a general idea (weeks, months, or years).