I’ve been watching this one for awhile. I appreciate the civility you all have mustered here. Usually semi-political discussions heat up much faster - which is why politics are not allowed. However this topic has not broken any forum rules. If it turns political or heats up at all I will immediately shut things down. As it is, the discussion may continue.
However this topic is already making a lot of folks uncomfortable. In the interest of keeping everyone happy, I will point out the forum controls.
At the bottom of every topic, there is a button which may say Normal, Tracking, Watching, or Muted. This is the control for your personal view of this thread. If you set it to “Muted”, it will disappear forever (for you). That may interest a few of you.
You can also mute entire categories. If you only want to see woodgas related posts, mute the “Off Topic” category completely. Go to Categories > Off Topic > in the right side there’s a dropdown, choose “Muted”.
Note that thread controls override the category control - if set to Tracking or Watching, it will still show in the list of topics even though the category is muted. Any thread you post in automatically gets set to Tracking. The theory being, if you’re posting, you must be interested. So, you may have some “clean-up” to do if you want them to ALL disappear. Change it from Tracking to Normal.
But then you might like having a select couple of threads from Off Topic. Like the “Life Goes On” thread.