Because nothing is more fun that creepy vinyl cowboy costumes!
For a totally non-political laugh, I offer this documentary of my time in college. Enjoy:
I’m deliberately posting lightly for a while. I planned for this during a walkabout. Good walkabouts pull me out of the orbit of everything; up to and including indoor plumbing (Something I very much appreciate… the reduced social interaction thing… not the shitting on tree stumps thing.) This walkabout went off the rails so I remained regrettably within reach of what once was (but is not currently demonstrably) civilization.
Bravely, I left my computer in cold storage but then I got some “motivation” via Patreon and scheduled PayPal donations. THANKS! Y’all gave me enough optimism to pop my head out of the foxhole and post a quick analysis of “life as we know it”. After this I’ll go back into hiding a little longer. As for both the circus and the monkeys; neither are mine.
If you’re looking for a time to check out for a few weeks, now is as good as any. Nothing real has happened for weeks and not much will happen for several more. Current events have gotten so dense as to create their own gravity of dumb. They’ve varied from spastic to panicked for years but the convolutions right now are impressively content free. Keeping the masses in perpetual alarm so they don’t notice that Biden has sunk to sub-Carter polling numbers while drifting past incompetent into aggressively senile has crossed the “stupid event horizon”.
The “stupid event horizon” happens when new stupid is generated so quickly that it overtakes old stupid before you even have a chance to determine if the old stupid has the slightest chance of being real. You can recognize it when some stupid happens and is forgotten (because it was stupid and everyone now tacitly acknowledges it as a stupid thing) before you even hear about the creation of (rather than the resolution of) that particular stupidity.
Almost nothing real is happening. Just ponder the stupid leaking out of the black hole that has formed around a diseased society:
Disney is pissed that publicly employed groomers must consult with parents before they explain dildos to second graders. The Supreme court nominee who was explicitly chosen based on genitalia and skin hue can’t define “woman” because she apparently missed the class. All this is pointless because nobody sane gives a shit what Disney thinks and nobody expects a person selected based on genitalia and skin hue (explicitly!) to somehow happen to be reasoned and wise. Why would we expect that? Do you Google “black human with vagina” to find thoughtful expositions of complex legal issues? If so can I please see your browser history? Also, to anyone willing to notice, Disney has been evil for decades. It was fun when we were toddlers many decades ago but that shit’s long gone. We are no longer in second grade, Walt’s head is in a freezer, and public schools desperately want to have dildo class because explaining fractions and spelling is too much like a real job.
Meanwhile, the Ukraine is selling T-shirts at a sporting goods store which proves it’s totally kicking Russia’s ass (just like it has every millisecond of the last several weeks). This awesomeness is so complete that every Russian soldier on earth has been vaporized. Except something is still happening. Either Russia is still in the game or sentient marmosets have attacked Kiev. In terms of actual evidence of anything, the media has clammed up so much I can barely verify either Ukraine or Russia exist. I assume they’re shooting at each other with guns and shit but knowing “who’s winning” this particular cage match of the retarded eludes me. You may think you know “who’s winning” but you don’t know jack. You’re not there and the press telling you what to think hasn’t told a true thing in years. If you are there, you probably read this blog on a smart phone. This means you’re a dumbass who sent a traceable signal to an antenna array specifically capable of locating your position. A missile is probably headed for your bunker before this sentence……….. ends.
Also, Elon Musk bought Twitter. I’m supposed to be either happy about it or sad; because a place that banned Trump but not the Taliban is a good source of… what exactly? This is a big deal in political circles because nobody useful cares about Twitter and nobody in politics is useful. Some 70% (?) of Americans don’t have a Twitter account and the 30% that do are heavily weighted to drooling morons. Meanwhile F***book is still giving unsolicited Covid advice to the last geriatric Boomers that pay attention to that venue. Everyone under 30 is doing God knows what on TikTok and that shit’s so creepy it won’t even be covered in second grade dildo class.
All this means opening the strategic oil reserve in an attempt to fix prices didn’t help; which is what everyone who took any economics course not taught by Paul Krugman already knew. Therefore, Chris Rock failed to dodge a bitch slap from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. What’s the take home lesson of the slap heard round the world? Nothing. Well I’d advise Rock to keep his guard up next time. Beyond that, who cares? Nobody in that entire show was anything but irrelevant.
Go on a reduced stupid diet from time to time. Don’t worry, you’ll catch up on your annual intake of propaganda when election counts “unexpectedly” go into overtime this November. After all: Joe Biden got more votes than any other president in American history. This massive undeniable unquestionable totally-legit record-breaking win makes complete sense for a man who’s less popular than whale-shit fifteen months later.
Pull out of the matrix. You’ll find yourself unwilling to fret over the dirty diapers of the fools still in the matrix. That is to say choosing the exact opposite life path of anything you’ll see in the “press” will serve you well. Though you can enjoy watching the “elite” discover they’re choking on failures they themselves created.
It began when two years of Covid hysteria didn’t prompt assholes like me to spontaneously die. How rude of us! Fauchi has a lab coat, a fat paycheck, and talks on TV. He’s the trinity: “The Science”, God, and the infallible word of The Narrative. He said deplorables would die en masse. What happened? Why aren’t we in a depopulated hellscape? Where is Fauchi now? What to make of the heretics who rode Harleys to Sturgis and lived? Bearded bikers happily frolicked in a big hairy mosh pit while masked Karen cowered alone with her eleven cats and ate vegan meals delivered by an Uber driver. The Uber driver also inexplicably lived.
Witness the digestion of the fact that she’s not smarter than Neanderthals on motorcycles. Or Uber drivers. Or me. You can almost see the rusty wheels starting to turn.
What about the “vax hesitant”? Those bastards just keep on living! The Amish? They had God on their side and it wasn’t Fauchi. Why not a fifth booster? How about another stimulus check? Lets tinker with the economy until inflation and expensive gas… oh, never mind.
TV Armageddon didn’t happen in real life. Unwanted observations have begun percolating through dense reality-resistant craniums and the steady drip drip drip is intruding on a make-believe world.
It took me two months to conclude “this virus ‘aint the end of the world”. Self-declared geniuses spent two years failing to reach the same conclusion. Why? What has this mistake done to their self image? Wearing a mask to display superiority and implementing “final solutions” that would make a Bond villain blush can’t be forgotten. I have done nothing which I regret. They have. They nuked the economy, the rule of law, democracy, society, and themselves… in that order. Their orgy of fear and social degradation feels stupid and destructive in retrospect. Gibbering about a war in the heart of Hunter Biden’s kickback harvesting territory isn’t going to fix that.
They’ve run low on denial. It’s all used up. They threw enough tantrums to get every piece of power they wanted. They got exactly what they wanted… good and hard. How’s it working out for them?
Bitching that you’d do the whole world better than the one that exists is not the thinking of an adult. The painful realization that their fake shit won’t create a new land of Unicorns is a small unwanted awakening.
Meanwhile, there’s another aspect. Shame. People like me have been laughing at them all this time. They can tear the internet down bit by bit and folks like me will just laugh harder. They’ve always been dipshit failures that nobody likes or needs. I knew that all along but now they know it too.
There’s nothing like unearned self-esteem to lead to the hollow realization that you suck.
Speaking of self esteem on the Richter scale (or should I say Rectum scale?), Trump remains alive, loud as ever, and massively more popular than the semi-coherent meat sculpture usurper which was built out of spare parts and planted in the presidency. I think God has a huge sense of humor because Trump got a hole in one. His Orangeness does golf just for fun. The nefarious halfwit illuminati and their fucktoys in the press pushed aside a popular dude who just loves to excel and replaced him with a decrepit being that can’t speak in complete sentences. The funniest part is that the golf game has more real world evidence than anything CNN has reported in decades. Think quick, which has more evidence; Trump’s golf score or Russian collusion? Damn that’s funny!
To destroy Trump and bring about Utopia was their whole reason to burn the world down. So, did it work? The defeated guy is winning golf tournaments. The “winner” has the stink of failure so bad that you can smell it thorough your TV. How’s that “deep state”, 4D chess, “fortification” of elections working out in the real world?
What a red pill! They can cling to their psychosis but reality happens no matter how hard you believe your own bullshit. Pretty much everyone now sees how badly things went astray. Ultimately, a lot of red pills are getting delivered in suppository form. That which was wantonly destroyed was better than the collapsed reeking cesspool of of failure hastily assembled in it’s place.
Fate looked into the fire and pronounced its decision. Learn to code bitches!
Also, a t-shirt in a sporting goods store is precisely how one wins a land war in Asia.
Decades ago, most Americans assumed (incorrectly) the American press reported true (or mostly true) things. In theory, you could read the newspaper (remember newspapers?) and have a basic idea what’s going on. In general, it sorta’ worked. If the press reported that the president was in Tallahassee or that it rained in Baltimore, it was reasonably likely to be more or less true.
In the same era, the Soviet Union emitted a steady stream of propaganda. Nobody, not even Soviet people, thought the propaganda was true. Nonetheless, people carefully studied the propaganda (which was known to be false) in an effort to figure out what the Kremlin wanted people to believe. This is one aspect of what was called Kremlinology.
If, for example, there was an article about the glorious people’s tractor factory exceeding production quotas for the zillionth time, perhaps this meant steel production was actually happening… or maybe the Soviets were telling us they’d die of starvation before they’d buy a John Deere tractor, or maybe it was Tuesday. This was all taken very seriously.
One day the Soviet union collapsed; it happened very quickly and (thankfully) without massive bloodshed. American “intelligence” agencies had not the slightest clue it was going to happen. Honestly, they seem a little unclear of the difference between the Soviet Union of 1990 and the Russian Federation of right now. Clearly, “intelligence” agencies were wrong then and likely wrong now.
American “intelligence” agencies that couldn’t figure out that a massive globe spanning empire was on the brink of economic collapse in 1990, now spy on Americans in 2022. Individuals once referred to as citizens and now referred to as civilians. We reside in a massive globe spanning empire which is on the brink of economic collapse. Meanwhile, our “intelligence” agencies pick sides in domestic politics and federal law enforcement agencies seem as likely to cause crime as they are to detect and thwart it.
Regardless, the concept of Kremlinology persists. We can’t help it. We are monkeys evolved to seek patterns and try to understand our environment; even one awash in lies. Many of us in 2022 read propaganda in hopes of ascertaining the intent of incompetent, illegitimate, clueless geezers who are still clinging to power despite long ago demonstrating they haven’t the shadow of a hope to govern wisely or even interact logically with reality. Just as Russian people read Pravda in 1990. What are the lies trying to trying to say?
Here’s a bit of propaganda I recently noticed. I’ll leave the conclusion up to you. What do you think the lies are trying to say?
Some vacations are more adventurous than others. This one has taken the left turn at Albuquerque.
I’m tapping this message in the offices of an emergency dental clinic that doesn’t have WiFi. Don’t fret. I’m fine. Mrs. Curmudgeon will be fine soon; for some definition of “fine”.
I may even live out the day and post this.
Mrs. Curmudgeon is a human ray of joy with whom I’m deeply in love… but she is neither a shrinking hothouse flower nor a fan of dentists. After several hours cruising down the highway with a werewolf in the passenger seat slowly boiling over, I convinced her to seek care… which she did. This may have saved my life.
In her defense, she stuck mostly to swearing and deadly stoic glares. Her pain tolerance is high. But toothaches don’t self correct and I had about 12 hours left before the pain built until it was intolerable… at which point jumping out of the moving car would be my safest course of action.
I’m glad it’s a dentist in the room with her instead of me.
Time for a break from the bullshit. Uncharacteristically, I’m not going truly off grid with tents and trailheads. Instead I’m wandering about America like a normal square but deliberately ghosting most of online society (and otherwise) for a while.
For example, I’ve noticed flags at half mast in a couple of different States. I haven’t a clue who bought the farm. I have a few candidates I’m hoping for. Alas, one is never that lucky. I’m sure ten minutes exposed to America’s Pravda (NPR) would inform me, but it would also dump a metric ton of propaganda into my soul and I’m in no mood for that. For now I’ll just enjoy the beauty of not knowing… I assume whomever kicked it will still be dead when I resurface.
I’ll check in from time to time. In the meantime you’re welcome to talk amongst yourselves. I’ll approve comments whenever I find WiFi.
I’ve survived Biden’s winter of death, and so have you. Spring has returned… as it always will. Relax and I’ll see ya’ later.
Check out this post at Maggie’s Farm. It’s a discussion of smartphone cameras and the single use device they’ve largely replaced. From there you can go to Smartphones vs Cameras: Where things stand in 2022 and what’s to come.*
It all boils down to this:
“Other than professionals with specialized needs, or the most serious hobbyists, does any ordinary person need a camera anymore?”
If you read through them you get a great overview of camera capacity, lenses, what they can do and not do… and logically, for the normal non-hobbyist it becomes clear. Dedicated cameras are toast.
I disagree! Smartphone cameras are just fine but they left out the part where smartphones themselves are built and programmed specifically and irredeemably as snitch-machines and dedicated human manipulation devices. My phone takes excellent photos, it’s quick and easy and pretty idiot proof. But everything it does with the otherwise fine imagery is a hassle or privacy violation.
If I take a photo with my iPhone it gets paired with all sorts of metadata. Then it goes through what I can only call “the great NSA funhouse of human management and creepy domestic spying“.
To begin with, the smartphone that took the image knows the time, date, location, identity, and a great deal of other information about the photograph and the camera owner. No matter how diligently you turn off your GPS, you can’t trust that it’s off. You can’t take a photo that doesn’t have time and date attached. There’s no such thing as a photo that’s “just a pretty sunset”. It’s a piece of data about who was where at what time and it can be added to a whole study of how this image fits in with thousands of other images.
The phone that took the photo is as good as a personal tracking device. A photo taken by Curmudgeon’s phone can be reasonably assumed to be taken by Curmudgeon… who was present at the scene and probably wielding the camera. If he’s in the photo you can ask who was holding it. If he says he wasn’t there you can ask him to explain how and why he was not in the vicinity of his phone. Most phones are protected by a passcode so there might even be a legal basis to assume Curmudgeon consented to the photo. Isn’t it presumed that he unlocked the phone that has the camera? Gotcha!
Put on your tinfoil hat and think about where the file goes. Does it stay on the phone? Maybe. But it also migrates to the cloud. The technical definition of “cloud” is “data storage you don’t control”. The photo wanders around the ‘net, gets touched inappropriately by the NSA, and invariably winds up in some sort of online shared access database. Your “photo” database probably also propagates to your other linked devices… such as an iPad or just your Apple account.
Only an idiot would think that destroying the phone after the file has wandered to the cloud will eliminate it. Wiped the file? Like with a cloth or something?
There are a lot of idiots out there. Don’t be one.
Once a photo is on the cloud, you can never know who gets to see it. If you delete it you can never know if it’s deleted. If you lose the device which took or stored the image, it will simply respawn. In some ways that’s super funny. It’s precisely how we got this bit of comedy gold:
It’s about more than privacy violation. It’s about manipulation. If I take a photo on an iPhone it is one click to post on social media (with all sorts of privacy violations included) but a huge slog to remove it from the sandbox where it lives. If you take a photo on a smartphone, you and your photo become the smartphone carrier’s bitch.
Your photos become their property and a good reason for you to stick with Corporation A or Corporation B. This is a bigger issue than you think. How many little old ladies continue loyally using phones from Carrier A or B because they’re afraid to lose photos of the grandkids? Furthermore, when the connection is severed, your images, which were their property are gone forever. You’ll never find a dusty old smartphone in dear departed grandma’s belongings and pull up ten year old images of little Suzy on the swingset. That image was “data” and it was no longer available six weeks after granny died… in accordance with the “user’s agreement”.
Whole generations of photos and memories can, will, and have, gone away with time. In the old days they’d reside in shoeboxes and fade gradually. Now each photo is instantly available until it’s totally gone; in the blink of an eye. Do you think a modern Apple account will last longer than a former generation’s shoebox full of black and white wedding photos?
I wonder not “if” but “when” it’ll be another step on our current ongoing cyberwar. (Yes, it is current and yes it is ongoing.) If you can lock a Canadian trucker’s ATM card, can you lock Gammy’s photos of the kids? Suppose, Gammy voted for the wrong party and once bitched about Medicare services, due to her wrongthink she’s a terrorist. So why not lock her Apple cloud account so she can’t see her photos of her long dead corgi? Serves the bitch right! Go ahead and ask some Silicon Valley twit if they’re worried about Gammy’s old corgi. Am I wrong? Is what I said less likely than any other weird thing that’s happening in 2022? (Vladimir Putin is at war right now and still has a Twitter account. Donald Trump was deleted from Twitter during his actual presidency. Nothing is too stupid and irrational for modern times.)
I’ve been present many times when someone took a photo on a phone and will gladly text it to me but it has to be within a system. They would have a cerebral implosion if I asked them to e-mail or print it. They don’t really control the photo at all. They don’t understand even the concept of controlling their own digital information.
Apple, a pox be on their soul, stores shit as *.HEIC. I don’t know that this file format does other than piss me off but I know it pisses me off. If I want to yank one or fifty photos from the Apple cloud and stuff it on a thumbdrive in a non-Apple location, I have to go through an elaborate download process. I have to go to my “real” computer (i.e. running an OS that I actually, if barely, control) and log on to Apple. Apple could, if it wished, sever that connection at will. Then, after I’ve given ritual submission to Apple, I am granted the ability to download from the cloud to local. From there I can get it into *.jpg or some other less proprietary format.
If I want to scrape off metadata (and I want to do so with every fucking photo by default) it’s another few hoops to jump through… and I’m never really sure it’s clean. Unless you’re a hell of a hacker, you aren’t either. Like me, you can only click “remove the following forms of metadata” in a third party application and hope for the best. Did it work? Who knows?
The point is, if I take a photo of a squirrel’s ass with a smart phone and want to post it with some modicum of privacy on this little blog… I’ve got to navigate a shitstorm of traps. All this to produce a *.jpg of a damn squirrel.
Fuck that.
I have a cheap knockoff GoPro. If I take a photo of a squirrel, you know what I’ve got?
A photo of a squirrel.
That’s a huge selling point for a dedicated camera. It will take a photo without getting all up in my grill.
The GoPro can’t spy because it doesn’t know shit. It doesn’t know where I was. It doesn’t know which GoPro took the image. It doesn’t know that A. Curmudgeon of Bumfuck Egypt owns the camera. No part of the device knows my banking information, my political affiliation, or what I ate for breakfast.
A GoPro names the file something logical like 2022-03-14-XXX.jpg. Theoretically, it knows the date, but it only knows whatever date I tell it. I can set it up to take photos dated to the war of 1812 if I wish.
Once the file is created it’s just a file. I can copy a *.jpg from the GoPro to anywhere else. Without genuflecting at the memory of Steve Jobs. I can take out the memory chip and stuff it in my pocket. I can stuff the memory chip in my computer. I can throw the camera in a lake. I can feed the memory card to my cat. I can, if I so choose, copy the photo for safekeeping on any cloud I want or I can keep it local or I can delete it.
When I delete a photo from a GoPro, it’s gone. If I drop the camera while I’m fishing and a gator eats it… the photo’s gone. That’s what I want of my photos. I want them to be just a photo… not a small piece of a greater database called “Curmudgeon’s NSA Dossier”
Each time I take a smartphone photo, some small piece of my independence and privacy was just eroded. That’s why I use a cheap ass GoPro whenever I can.
Incidentally, none of this implies I have some dark secret double life. Most photos I take are of the “which order do these washers go on the bolt” variety. I take lots of photos of part numbers and stupid shit like that.
Being circumspect with privacy is just basic human mental hygiene. It doesn’t mean I’m a corrupt asshole like Hunter Biden. I don’t don’t have to worry about photos respawning from the cloud that show me passed out in a room full of Ukrainian hookers with a crack pipe in my mouth. Why? Because I’m not an idiot crackhead who does freaky shit.
Personal privacy can and should be boring. It doesn’t imply you’ve got illegal behavior to hide. Maybe you’re just a fully realized adult who wants to be left alone. Unlike Bit Bleaching Hildabeast who ran her own State Department shadow communications network I can use a GoPro to take a photo of my cat with a clean moral conscience.
I want to enjoy the level of privacy formerly associated with human dignity. I intend to be that way until I die. If you could crack the story behind every photo I took all you’d get is the secret location of some of my favorite fishing holes. And a lot of pictures of bolts.
Privacy and free movement of your own images; that’s reason enough to have a camera that does nothing but take photos. I suppose I’m the last guy, or at least the last generation, to think that way. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
A.C.
*I notice the article about 2022 has a 2020 byline. I’m going to assume it’s a typo. If it’s the work of a time traveler it’s a very boring one that missed far bigger events in the last two years.
Google is the “go-to” search engine if you want to be spied upon while hearing the talking points of a generic DC sycophant. If you want to evaluate actual information like an actual adult, Google is shit.
I’ve been using “Duck Duck Go”. I switched years ago. It’s not perfect but I’ve generally been satisfied. I planned to use it forever.
Yesterday “Duck Duck Go” announced it would down rank sites based on their opinion of the Ukraine/Russia situation. Within the hour, I switched to another search engine.
I don’t care what position they chose in a political arena. I only care that they chose a side. They intend to manipulate results on behalf of one side or the other. That’s exactly what they said. There’s no beating around the bush. “We’re going to down rank X and up rank Y.” That’s manipulation; it’s also lying.
Lying serves only one purpose, to manipulate me. What self respecting adult would voluntarily engage with a manipulator?
If a company goes woke it’s dead to me; instantly if possible. Every minute you engage with liars is a minute they’re either messing with your perception or mistreating you. I’m not going to be the victim of their abusive relationship.
Dump ’em and forget about it. Easy peasy. Do it without hesitation.
They’re corporations; You owe them noting. They have no soul, they deserve no loyalty, they are remorseless, and (especially when woke) they’re evil. Don’t get angry with woke corporations. Don’t wring your hands about their loss. Don’t wish they’d perform their duties honorably. Dump them and move on; right away. Never look back. You’ll find you don’t miss them.
I don’t miss the decade of Google’s bullshit that I evaded. I won’t miss the future bullshit of the now inferior Duck Duck Go.
Go woke, I’m gone. It’s an instinctive and perfect reflex. It’s always the right decision.
This is simple basic self care. You’re an adult. You’ve got a mind and soul. You can and should make your own decisions. The minute anyone in your realm chooses to put politics over truth, is the minute they’ve decided to lie to you. From that point forward they literally mean you harm. Act accordingly.
A “hot tent” is designed (or modified) to camp in winter with a heat source within… usually a wood burning stove. This is simultaneously practical and hilarious. “I’m going to light a fire inside a fabric structure… what could go wrong?”
This isn’t weekend in August equipment. It’s specialized for harsh conditions. The one I got is particularly stout… at the expense of weight. There will be no backpacking with this tent! The way it was packed and the way it’s designed, I get the idea it could be air dropped onto an ice sheet on Baffin Island and serve very well right out of the box. Polar Bear hunting anyone?
Camping is all about trade offs. With cold weather camping it’s even more important. Going light or cheap comes with a price in comfort and safety. There’s a difference between “survive” and “thrive” and my idea is to thrive. Any dipshit can shiver in a mummy bag in a snowdrift… I’ve done it myself. It was fun at the time but I’m over that now. (What the hell was I thinking?)
Hot tents can be expensive. (There are ways to avoid this if you’re tough and clever. If you’re a stud who can winter camp on the cheap, more power too you. Toss a tarp over a taut line, nestle into a pile of pine boughs, and have at it.) For the rest of us, hot tents are spendy. Everything has to be made tougher and by their nature they’re complex.
There’s a skillset required too. A basic summer tent is pretty obvious. Even dipshit half drunk weekend warriors will figure it out. With a hot tent you can fuck up and burn it down. Plus of course you’re using it in conditions that are, if not unsafe, at least merit careful attention. I plan to test mine thoroughly before I overnight on a lake or mountain and get in over my head. In a way, I’m training myself more than testing the tent.
I’m still new at this. Early this winter I made the terrifyingly expensive purchase of a Russian Bear Market UP2. As tents go, it’s an odd duck. They’re very well designed but nothing like any tents I’ve used. When I bought it (and recovered from the heart attack at the cost), I mumbled something about my motivations (links: 1, 2, 3, 4). I also linked to the make and model on Amazon (hot tent and stove). (Note: the links go to Amazon. If you buy anything from those links it costs you nothing extra and I get a small kickback from Amazon. I don’t care if you buy one but at least you can see the details if you want to follow along with my new adventure. It says they’re in stock but I don’t know if that’s true.)
Warning: The Russian Bear UP2 comes from Russia. The supply chain for these tents is or may be severed. It’s the crashing of civilization so of course politics infects everything, including tent companies. My tent was made in Russia, stored briefly in the continental US, and shipped to me from the East Coast. YMMV. Back in the long forgotten time of last November there were reports of multi week delays, especially for Canadian purchaser. The tents had gotten popular (as popular as a ridiculously overbuilt winter tent can get) and demand was high. Now, it’s five more months of stupidity and nothing has improved efficiency or reason in the world’s economy. Who knows what’s going on?
Here’s my warning. If you want one, order it yesterday. There are many hot tents but the Russian Bear Market UP2 is unique. It’s one of a kind. You may never have this chance again. You may have already lost the chance.
If you don’t want this particular critter, don’t sweat it. There will always be hot tents. A few are even made in America. There’s one brand from Alaska that’s just as expensive and well recommended, though totally different in design.
Field report:
Last year, I did a quick test campout (in what turned out to be a brutal blizzard!). I posted pics here. Last weekend I made another go at it. I’m including details that may or may not interest you.
The carry bag is pure toughness. It’s just the right size, not like some camping gear where it takes huge effort to get stuff back into the bag after you’ve used it. (I’m looking at you REI!)
It appears waterproof but with a zipper that’s probably just water resistant. Did I mention it’s tough? I wouldn’t hesitate to toss it in the back of a truck.
The tent comes with roughly six million yards of guyline. It was overwhelming. To manage them, I carefully sorted everything out. The lines are much longer than they need to be but everyone says not to cut them. In keeping with Chesterton’s Fence I’m keeping them full length.
Unlike some tents, the UP2 has oodles of anchor points. So many that you’ll probably never use them all. On most tents you just leave guylines hooked to the tent, but that’s weird in the self supporting UP2 because the anchor points are both optional and literally everywhere.
My idea was to buy many cheap light carabiners. This allows me to string the line to wherever I want and just clip on to the nearest tent anchor point with a carabiner. No knots at the tent side! It worked very well.
The tent came with a bunch of three hole aluminum “tensioners”. They’re beefy but I’m never sure how the three hole tensioners work. It seems a bit overboard and I might retie them as two hole tensioners.
I had “too many” carabiners so I made extra guylines. The lines of lighter color p-cord are ones I made myself.
This isn’t the whole set. There are more. You can see why I needed to sort them. If they were all in one tangle I’d waste forever each time I setup the tent. If you’re camping and need extra line, a UP2 has enough paracord to rig a schooner.
I built three homemade guylines for the chimney. On these, I added about a foot of light chain. The idea was that I could anchor to the 3 points on the top of the chimney and tie them down. (P-cord alone might melt.)
I put a key ring on each of the three anchor points on the chimney. Small metal carabiners hook to the rings. Getting the rings installed was a hassle but the carabiners wouldn’t work without them. This is all optional. The chimney is fine as self supporting but in the (admittedly brutal) blizzard last year I felt the chimney flex a little in the wind.
Here’s the set of three chimney guylines tossed on the snow.
You can’t see the a third guyline in the back but trust me, it’s there. With three anchor points, the chimney is rock solid. Don’t overtighten. It’s hard to resist the urge to torque it down like a ship’s mast. All you need is a few pounds of pressure. It was solid as cement when anchored like this. In case you’re wondering, that cap on the chimney is a spark arrester. I’ve never yet seen a spark come out of this chimney. 
Here’s a photo taken at night. The UFO on the left is a pole light. This was just a test, not a wilderness expedition. In case you’re wondering, the pipe gets hot… don’t touch it. But I didn’t have it glowing or anything crazy like that. 
The tent is self supporting but I like to anchor it solid. If a blizzard kicks in I intend to be smug instead of panicked.
Anchoring to the ground is an issue when it’s frozen. The tent comes with a huge pile of very beefy stakes that look like mini-rebar. They’re rugged, but I couldn’t hammer them into the ice.
A subset of stakes have a loop on top and coarse beefy threads. They work slicker than snot! I hand spun them right into rock solid ice. Once the thread bit they pulled themselves in. I couldn’t have done better with Sackrete and a post hole auger! I’m sure I could anchor on glare ice if needed. Very cool!
The place where a stovepipe goes through a hot tent is called a “stove jack”. It’s a key piece of the puzzle. This flap covers the stove jack for times when you don’t want a pipe going through your roof. 
The flap is made of flame resistant material. It reminds me of welder’s fabric. On the wall, all the way from the stove jack to the floor is a layer of the flame resistant stuff. It’s removable but I leave it in there all the time. The stove (not the tent) comes with another piece of flame resistant stuff which I put here on the snow.
A note about floors. The tent comes with a nice high quality zip in floor. There are pros and cons to floors in a warm tent setup on snow. This time I zipped out the floor and tried a cheap tarp. It looked stupid but worked fine.
The stove jack has a metal ring. It fits the stove pipe precisely. This isn’t coincidence, I bought the stove to match the tent. 
The UP2 is a two layered tent. That trapped layer of air serves as insulation and it seems to do a very good job.
Each layer gets it’s own stove jack. There’s one stove jack with metal ring on the outer layer and a second one on the inner layer. Both are isolated with flame resistant material.
This is the outside stove jack with its flap rolled up. Notice that the flap and everything in the vicinity is that silvery flame resistant material. One note, you have to be pretty tall to roll up the outer flap after the tent is setup. It’s a lot easier to roll it up before erecting the tent. That’s why we test things y’all!
This is the outside of the stove jack when it’s all sealed up. You can see that this thing seals up pretty dang weather tight.
Down low there’s a small air intake vent. Open that so the stove has steady fresh air. It props open with a little stick. Don’t let the photo fool you, it’s small; about the size of a CD case. 
Here’s the vent on the inside. It has netting to keep critters out. Notice the flame resistant material on the right.
It doesn’t show up well because it’s in a camouflage netting pocket but the stove comes with a nice little smoke detector (CO2 detector?). I had to replace the Russian battery but I tested it and the detector works great. 
Speaking of camouflage pockets, pockets are sewed into most of the walls. They’re very handy but, since they’re made of camouflage netting, it’s easy to lose stuff in there. This also shows my Teton XXL cot with my Teton XXL mattress and 0 degree Teton bag. Those three things together are more comfortable than most normal beds I’ve slept in.
The XXL cot does take up a lot of the tent, going smaller might be wise if you don’t already have the cot. Russian Bear Market sells cots that are smaller than my fat ass American style cot. They would fit better but I couldn’t afford a second cot.
In addition to the sewn in pockets there are two hanging pockets. These are clever. They hang on Velcro and aren’t part of the tent. I plan to load them up with useful stuff and keep them with my miscellaneous camping gear. Then I can hang them in the tent with all the stuff I need already in the pockets. Here’s one of two. 
Here’s the other one. 
I got a “dog blanket” to cover my bedding. It’s meant to keep a normal household bed reasonably clean when dogs sleep on them. I figured it would be good for a tent where pine needles and stray bits of snow and stuff would be bouncing about. (Nature is messy!)
It got a full test and passed. I was out rummaging around for firewood and left the door open. Our cat moved in. You’ve never seen a cat as happy as one that’s snoozing in its own 9′ diameter tent with a cot, mattress, and sleeping bag that some dumb human had arranged for its pleasure. No pawprints on my sleeping bag so I call it a win.
Here’s a picture of the damn cat. In this photo it’s pissed off that I kicked it off my bed. 
Heat rises and the dome gets super hot. It’ll be an easy 50 degrees hotter at head level than ankle! A battery operated fan and light was the perfect choice. I set the fan on low and it was nearly inaudible. It helped regulate the tent’s temperature and is well worth it.
The top of the dome has a “cargo shelf”. It’s the camoflage octagon on the upper right of the photo. Stuff mittens and socks in there and they get the most heat available in the tent. Dries things out nicely. Notice too the zillion little white clips for hanging stuff. Very handy. 
The light and the fan can point in different directions. 
This is clearly a winter tent. The two windows are small and have a million layers to be sealed to one degree or another against the elements. They’re mostly for ventilation. You won’t be looking out at vistas through these. However, the doors (there are two) would be fine for that purpose. This is what it looks like sealed up. 
Here it is when open. Note there are several layers and many options for “open”. There are screen options and you can also have it “closed” but get sunshine through a transparent window. There’s a stick to create a gap to allow ventilation in even the worst weather. I left it open like this all night. It worked well. 
There are many woodstoves you can get for a hot tent. I got the Caminus M from Russian Bear Market because it’s designed to match the UP2. It’s spendy. There are cheaper solutions but probably not better in terms of heat, quality, and matching the tent.
Like the tent it comes in a high quality bag. Like the tent it’s very heavy.
Here’s what it looks like setup and with a coffee percolator perched in the appropriate spot. A note about the percolator, in this test it got hot enough for hot cocoa just fine but it was a little slow. The stove is very efficient and unless it’s just massively cold out there you might not want to stoke it too much and roast yourself out of the tent. I intend to cook on the stove and it’ll work but I’ll need to get used to it.
Notice the chimney goes out in front. This fits in the dome shaped tent perfectly. It’s a unique feature of this stove. 
Proof is in the pudding. This thermometer was on my pillow. Be aware that the top of the tent is very warm and the floor isn’t. If I wanted to be misleading I’d stick the thermometer in the overhead storage shelf and say “look, it’s 90 degrees in the tent”.
There are two metal “heat shield” covers for the stove’s windows. I hear it can be used as a sauna but I don’t know about that. I’m not sufficiently Russian to know how to setup a sauna while camping.
The windows on the stove are beautiful. They also serve a purpose. The heat radiates out of them much more than the surrounding metal. Physics matters! You can leave on the heat shields if you want but why would you?
OK, that’s the trip report. Sorry it’s so long. Get out there and enjoy nature.
