Support IIB

There is an amazing amount of good writing on Substack and some people are making a living from it. IIB may some day sprout a paid subscribers feature, but it won’t be any time soon, and the bulk of the work here will ALWAYS remain free. I came up through the world of social movements and while I’m now a professional, it would be shabby of me to not continue offering a hand up to anyone else who wants to join a whole of society response to the disinformation campaign against our democracy.

There’s another reason it’ll stay free …

I staggered off the La Luz trail on the west side of the Sandia mountains on June 30th of 2007, dangerously dehydrated after getting altitude sickness about a thousand feet short of the summit, which has running water and a tram back down to the starting point of the trail. I was really fit, training for another shot at climbing Mount Elbert, but I’d contracted Lyme earlier that year. The combination of dehydration and disease got me, and stole much of the next sixteen years of my life.

I moved to California in 2015 in order to get health care. I thought it would take more like eight months than eight years, but on June 10th, three weeks shy of the sixteenth anniversary of my tumble into disability, I got some blood work back. I went home, immediately stopped two prescriptions, and cut two others by 50%. I am still stuck with a really irregular sleep pattern, but otherwise California’s marvelous health care system has more or less restored me. Thanks, Obama.

You don’t go through sixteen years of disability, thirteen of those with right wing hate groups in hot pursuit, without some accumulated trouble. Even if people would become subscribers here, thanks to ID theft I can not get a bank account. So I am stuck panhandling here on this support page and there is an easy way for you to assist, if you are so inclined.

Below is my Amazon wish list. The next thing I want to do is start working with Qubes, “A reasonably secure operating system”, which is a bit of a gag from the creator - Linux is to Qubes as Cessna 172 is to Boeing F/A-18. My workstation is well supported, but Qubes will not tolerate insecure USB peripherals so it’s PS/2 or not at all. I’m going to need another boot drive and I don’t want to have to open the case and fiddle with connectors every time I change, so the ICY DOCK hot swap bay is needed.

Amazon gift cards in any denomination would be great, just email nrauhauser at gmail. And since I know people will ask, there’s no Paypal or anything like that. I will be getting a Monero wallet in the near future, which will permit donations without creating a trail that undesirables could follow.