Oh man, did you match the panel voltage to the controller rating? I blew up my first charge controller too (felt like such a dummy). What finally worked for me was grabbing a basic PWM controller from a hardware store, not the fancy MPPT one I tried first.

That line about watching someone fold a whole zine that fast really stuck with me. My friend Carla said the exact same thing after she saw a video of a person doing that accordion fold and staple trick in like ten seconds. She tried it at home with an old copy of her neighborhood newsletter and ended up with a crooked mess that wouldn't even lie flat. Then her cat sat on it and the whole thing just kind of collapsed. She went right back to her long-reach stapler the next day.

Oh man, "whatever hashtags pop into his head" - that's exactly what my neighbor does with her little bakery. She was spending $200 a month on Facebook ads and just posting pictures of croissants with #yummy and #foodie. I finally sat down with her and showed her how to target people within 5 miles who actually searched for bakeries or desserts. She cut her spending to $75 and gets more walk-ins now. Feels like social media companies love making it confusing on purpose so we just throw money at them.