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Monday, June 8, 2026
The OGLS Newsletter
What's moving in off-grid living, solar, and preparedness today.
SunForge 12kW Off-Grid Kit (Sponsored)
Power your entire homestead off the grid with the SunForge 12kW system. High-efficiency panels, a 20kWh LiFePO4 battery bank, and a hybrid inverter keep the lights on through any outage. Pre-wired, expandable, and backed by a 12-year warranty. This week only: 30 percent off the complete kit plus free shipping.Off-Grid
9 Ways to Navigate Without GPS 2026 (9 minute read)
How to Navigate Without GPS: At a Glance If your phone dies or cell service drops, you can stay on track using classic off-grid tactics. Here is the fast track to navigating without tech: The Golden Tools: Use a reliable magnetic compass to find your bearings and keep a physical road atlas or local paper map handy. Natural Guides: Look for prominent environmental landmarks, trace the sun’s path during the day, or find the North Star at night. Infrastructure & Human Input: Track your position by decoding mile markers on highways, following linear features like rivers or power lines, and askingSolar
Elon Musk’s Missed Full Self-Driving Targets Are Even Wilder Than I Remembered (6 minute read)
There’s been a little debate going on lately about whether Tesla Full Self-Driving is “effectively” Level 4 autonomous driving or is still just a Level 2 driver-assist system. Yesterday, I shared a comment from a reader explaining that it’s actually Level 2++ now. I’ll come back to that in a ... [continued] The post Elon Musk’s Missed Full Self-Driving Targets Are Even Wilder Than I Remembered appeared first on CleanTechnica.Survey Sunday: do you still believe in Elon Musk? (4 minute read)
Last week, we ran a sidebar survey asking if Electrek readers still believed in Elon Musk’s vision of a self-driving, robot-built future on Mars. After receiving more than 3,000 responses, here’s what you told us you think about the world’s first trillionaire.2100 Transition Scenarios Need A Better Population Denominator (5 minute read)
One of the easiest ways to get 2100 wrong is to carry the 20th-century population curve forward as if it still defines the future. The world went from about 2.5 billion people in 1950 to more than 8 billion today, and that expansion shaped modern assumptions about food, energy, cities, ... [continued] The post 2100 Transition Scenarios Need A Better Population Denominator appeared first on CleanTechnica.$7,000 for Rooftop Solar Permitting!? Time to Automate It (6 minute read)
According to an analysis from Environment America and Frontier Group, permitting requirements can add a whopping $7,000 to the cost of a rooftop solar power system. $7,000?! That’s a crazy amount of extra money to add onto a solar power system just to get a permit. The good news in ... [continued] The post $7,000 for Rooftop Solar Permitting!? Time to Automate It appeared first on CleanTechnica.Livestock
The Truth About Cougar Attacks on Humans, From an Officer Who Investigated Them (10 minute read)
This story, “The Silent Hunter,” originally ran in the July 1967 issue of Outdoor Life. I was only nine or 10 years old when I acquired the best dog I’ve ever had. Tip was a Boston bull and German shepherd cross, but none of the hounds I have owned since could equal him at hunting cats. I started Tip as a pup on ground squirrels and rabbits, but he quickly showed a strong preference for house cats, and from that quarry it was only a short step to bobcats. Around Vernon, in British Columbia 100 miles north of the U.S. border, where I grew up on a farm, there were enough bobcats to meet the needRainKeeper Gravity Filter (Sponsored)
Clean, safe drinking water anywhere with no power, no plumbing, and no chemicals. The RainKeeper gravity filter removes 99.999 percent of bacteria, parasites, and microplastics from rain, creek, or well water at up to 12 gallons a day. Built for homesteads, cabins, and bug-out kits.Camping & Hiking
