What other boards do you frequent?

Paddlers' Place
#1

I’m a naturally curious person. I always like to find out the ‘why?’ of things.
And The Study of Human Nature is something that also has fascinated me my whole life.
Finally, I’m a very diverse and tolerant person, so I have many, many differing interests and often, go into depth in each one.
Blue Collar Scientific Intellectual is an apt title.

So…what other boards do you frequent?
This board is very limiting as far as discussion, which is the natural outcome of the ideology here. Is got rid of my kayaks, but they were rec/fishing ones and my whitewater canoes. But I stil l have a fishing kayone. My old shoulders (and one fake one) might have a lot of input in whether I use that or sell that too.

Twitter, tho no longer censored by the corrupt/criminal, is more news oriented, a story then short responses. Not for me (N4M)
facebook has groups of common interests, but they too have been heavily involved in censorship for the corrupt/totalitarians…and even ran social experiments on their users, playing with their feeds to note changes. Zucker and DARPA did that (look it up). So, N4M.

Yootoob is g**gle and they are also heavily involved in censorship and data harvesting. Corrupt again.

GAB was good for a long time, but it seems things have changed there as the users would not spend 10 bucks a monty to financially support free speech. No Longer 4 Me.

That leaves BBS board, the old school ones, like this one.
I prefer that type as it allows more lengthy interactions between the users, which is my interest. Not into ‘likes’ or 1 sentence/meme interactions.

I found a ‘campfire’ bbs board, but turns out the owner is a major troller there, so it’s short of a sh*t board, full of fecal matter filled adolescent posts.

So I came back here as I left due to censorship that took place in 2019 (and still does mind you, just not as totalitarian).

But I need more than this. My brain needs more than this. My mind needs more.

So anyone have any other ones the go to?
Recommendations?

I know I enlightened one guy here, who was a “scientist” who rediculed the idea that “water just comes out of the ground…and never ends”.
Here’s a pic of that. There are many places like this around here, but in other states too. Sometimes water can be refreshingly great, but if it’s filtered through limestone, it can have arsenic in it. Common fallacy is man caused. Nope. Not due to any human activity, just the filtration process (limestone) underground.
Life can be Big. Experience it.

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#2

Canoetripping.net can be interesting.

#3

None.

1 Like
#5

I frequent “Songofthepaddle” which is a mostly European (UK based) forum similar to P.com. It proved incredibly valuable when I planned a trip with one of my folding kayaks to England 8 years ago – I posted my plans a week before leaving and got a half dozen responses within 24 hours. I learned that the town where I had rented a farm cottage for 10 days had a canoe and kayak club with their own boat house and dock and would be happy to get together with me to paddle some of their favorite rivers. Two of the members even showed up at the cottage less than 2 hours after I checked into it to welcome me. I did 3 outings with club members during that trip and learned a lot about the area from them. Since then I have corresponded with several other paddlers in various parts of the world and now have connections and invitations to visit from many of them. (The covid shut downs caused those potential visits to be postponed, but I’m still working on getting back to plans for overseas trips.)

There used to be a forum very much like this one exclusively for folding and inflatable kayaks (foldingkayaks.org) , but the administrator who set it up and maintained it eventually did not have the energy to continue to maintain and pay for keeping it running so it closed. Greatly missed by those of us who have folders and inflatables in our fleets. But some of the folks who were regular participants in that one have started Facebook groups, like “Folding Kayaks” for folder fans and I have been joining those exchanges.

BTW, you did not “enlighten” me (and I am not a “guy”). And I do have college degrees including graduate and field work in geology, specifically in processes like hydrology, glaciology, sedimentary geology, plate tectonics and the evolution of landforms. The water that we use (including that which comes out of the ground) technically originates from the seas, via the skies, through evaporation and precipitation. H2O landed on the original rocky planet via the asteroids that collided with it to add to its mass, and eventually was able to coalesce into the seas surrounding the volcanically produced land masses atop the crustal plates. Since then, water has circulated through the geography due to the actions of weather systems, erosion, and plate tectonics, which is why is persists under the continents. And not true that it “never ends” coming out of the ground. Shifts in global climate and humanity’s deep thirst for drawing down ancient aquifers for agriculture, industry and the daily consumption by our exploding populations are drying up and/or rendering useless the local and regional subsurface reserves worldwide.

I gather that you are self-educated enough to appreciate that your comment appeared naive.

4 Likes
#6

If it’s the one I think it is, I looked into that as that’s more along what I do, canoe camp. I joined but didn’t post anything as somehow I realized the owner/admin was from oregon, portland IIRC. That’s one of the homes of antifa/communists/hard leftists and I know a bit about them/that type, so don’t want any info about me to be in their laps.

#7

Yeah, know that feeling. That’s a time gone by and won’t return. Tech has made humans to be not thinking and more reflexive…with the attention span of gnats. The TLDR gen will be multi generational I’m afraid.
And of course throw in the huge majority of social media users have to look into their palm(s) in order to interact/consume…how big is that screen again?

I didn’t know yahoo had groups. Again, “had” seems to be the operational term for us oldies.

#8

[quote from willowleaf]
BTW, you did not “enlighten” me (and I am not a “guy”). And I do have college degrees
[end quote]

Don’t take this wrong, but I don’t care if I did or didn’t as you are nothing to me. I don’t mean this in a bad way. It’s just the way it is. Your degree means nothing to me as I’m sure it also does to most people. I have quite a varied educational background, complete with degrees, but I don’t tell people about them. I’ve found people who state their paper qualifiecations at the start of a conversation aren’t worth listening to.

“by our exploding populations”
Population in the industrialized, modern nations have actually been declining for many decades. Tail end of the Boomers didn’t even replace themselves.
You are thinking of third worlders. They have been procreating for many, many decades in places that cannot possibly support such increases. And they cannot even maintain the baseline pop. for that matter. They are creating their own destruction…of themselves, their area, and their environment.

Go dig wells for them and stop trying to dictate to responsible, environmentally friendly westerners how to live. The problems are there in their cr*ppy nations.
If you can get them to stop reproducing like mad, then a lot of their problems would stop. And their self created problems would stop affecting us in modern, industrialized nations.
Your made up data and speculative theories will do nothing for them either.
Demand they be responsible for themselves.
You will actually help them, contribute to them and help them stop destroying their enviorments. And stop having wars too. And disease outbreaks.

If you have a degree in ocean plastics, then go to india (18% of the world’s pop) as they dump plastic into their rivers by the truckload. And china. Of course mexico. Raw sewage and industrial waste too. That would be FAR more productive than tellling us what kind of windows we are allowed to have or what kind of air conditioning.

“I gather that you are self-educated enough to appreciate that your comment appeared naive.”

what do you mean by “self-educated”?
granted, I did take it upon myself to excel in all of my studies. I’m like that. I appreciate knowledge so I always went above and beyond what was expected to pass.
Guess a lot of that stems from having to quantify things. One thing drilled into us is we had to “stand up in a court of law and in front of God and everyone state how we came to our conclusion”.

All of that is lost on the climate theorists I guess.

1 Like
#9

Reddit is a big deal these days.

2 Likes
#10

It did seem like a lot of people were going to that. I visited it a few times and it seemed…different, more text based, but this was around 2015 and the usa was experiencing a top down revolution…and that meant heavy censorship.
I went there because I heard that reddit wasn’t disappearing people/subjects…but soon that changed.
They had a /Donald Trump subred…and that was disappeared.
So I never signed up. Some users then left and went to GAB as that was the last of the bigger boards where it was next to impossible to get censored or disappeared. They had block and a mute functions that worked wonderfully so each user could be in charge of their own experience there.
But alas, if people are used to getting something for free, it’ll be next to impossible to get them to pay for that at a later date. There’s a maxim about that. Should be Maximus level reality.

#11

I don’t know if this board was short staffed or just a change of POV relative to letting people speak, but I figured this thread wouldn’t last long and certainly my comment in response to a demeaning post directed at me, would disappear as they did back in the w u h a n flu days…and present days where rookie disappeared the whole thread, OP and all.

This is like adult stuff. :+1:
But the heavy hands of censorship and intolerance have been the modus operandi here for a very long time. So the character of this board is reflective of that.
Can it recover? Does anyone even want it to? Dunno to both.

#12

Still not really focused on paddling I see. Let me help you get back on track. I live in wv and have been a member of the west virginia wildwater association for a while. So I check their forum and facebook page frequently. There’s a local facebook paddling page, fayetteville whitewater,and while I frequently browse it, I very rarely post on it. There’s a wv visuals facebook page that can be interesting and a good place to learn about water levels or wood. Also on facebook I belong to some paddling groups around the country as well as a group for seniors and a group for solo kayakers and kayak camping. There seem to be less ads and political stuff on facebook group sites than individual feeds.

Sometimes I meet other paddlers on paddling club pages or facebook paddling groups in other states. I have my own facebook group, paddling the 50 states, just 70 friends so far but I’m fine with that. Redirecting....

In the past I have used the northeast paddlers message board and boundary waters message board to get trip information for certain areas.

When I want to get an overall picture of water levels I use american whitewater but locally I just go directly to the source online to the current usgs gauge information that I want. I like to see if levels are rising or falling and how quickly that is happening. When I’m planning trips I use google maps, american whitewater, alltrails, onX, and far out. I’m often online with recreation.gov a lot either researching or booking campsites and of course I have a lot of different state park accounts because I paddle across the country. Where I plan to go often determines where I end up on the internet. I am on pcom to learn and share more about paddling. Out of the country I have used caltopo for hiking maps in mexico and guatemala.

#13

I though you lived in Ohio?

#14

There are various Meetup Groups that are focused on paddlesports and list trips and events.

Being an aspiring curmudgeon, I don’t do social media.

3 Likes
#15

can’t slip anything by you
I’m just following the posting guidelines here. as you seem to have a problem with that, you might want to demand a change in the posting guidelines for this forum. Start a subject here, listing your demands.

I’m down to 1 paddle operated vessel now. Wife passed, so it’s just me. I have dogs to take care of so it’d be mostly day stuff. I can’t take the dogs as they sink. There are a lot of rivers around here, nothing challenging, but I’ve done them all anyway. No interest in paddling lakes as that’s boring unless I’m fishing…and I mainly fish the great lakes or wading streams.

I can walk a block and look at the level of the river and know from that the levels of the other rivers around here. But like you, I know the sites to get the water flow data. I sometimes read blog posts or whatever they are about rivers, but I’ve already read almost all of those and have been to most of those anyway. So I’d just need the flow rates.

Next spring I plan on taking camping trips again, both with the boat or the canoe. I have a lot of things to take care of, wrap up this winter so I’ll be busy,l but hope spring will start the new chapter for me.
If so, I’ll contact you and let you know I’m going to do something that I’ll need your wisdom on that involves a paddle.

#16

Oh, I forgot, something you might be interesting in, per the guidelines for posting here. I sighted in 2 rifles today, a 308 and a 223. Zeroed at 200y. Won’t shoot a deer much past 300 and only use the 308 for that range. When I harvest a deer, I like good meat, so they invariably drop or only go 50ft. Great meat that way and humane harvesting.

The 308 I ran 178gr ELD-x and the 223, 75gr HPBT. I’ve killed deer with both of those loads. Wife loved her gun and harvested a LOT of deer with that. Don’t have the heart to get rid of that.

Do you shoot? I do pistols mostly.

1 Like
#17

Don’t give up!! Try harder!! Do the small boards. Big Tech Eats People.