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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: December 7th, 2023

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  • I feel this in my soul. If I were independently wealthy or had a sizeable amount of passive income, I probably would give up the corporate life and just do something like farming.

    But in reality, most of the farmers in my area either have to make do with very little or they end up having to work a full time job to supplement the farm income, build a retirement fund, and to have decent health insurance. Kind of takes the joy out of it if I know I’m either going to have to compromise further on healthcare & retirement, or if I’m going to have to continue working another job either way.


  • Where I live, the big 3 are mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise.

    If I had to limit it to the “big 3” you listed, I would have to go for mustard. There are so many different types and of the options listed, mustard is easily the healthiest (or can be the healthiest) since a basic mustard is going to be low in sodium, sugar, and fat while also containing healthy phytonutrients.

    Mustard is also much more versatile than folks in my part of the world give it credit for. It seems like a cultural thing / learned behavior rather than based on actual taste preferences. For instance, a fairly bland yellow mustard actually goes well with french fries. A spicy mustard (the types that are almost like horseradish) goes well with a variety of roasted veggies like broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower. Honey mustard works well with chicken in various forms. Lots of cheeses pair well with different types of mustard. I could go on, but I’ll stop here.

    Since the majority of folks are discussing condiments that aren’t in your “big 3”, I would say that my actual favorite condiment is hot sauce. I’m not a connoisseur by any means and I don’t have refined tastes. I don’t even like super spicy hot sauces. But I do use hot sauce of some type with almost every meal and I go through a lot more of that than mustard or ketchup. Granted, hot sauces tend to be high in sodium, so I try not to go overboard.


  • Short Answer: No. But it really depends on context.

    If the context is that this will prevent police from digging up a body as part of an investigation into a crime, this will not work. On the off chance that the police are even aware the plants are endangered, there will be legal avenues for relocating or otherwise disturbing the plants. A criminal investigation involving a human body is something that is going to qualify in most parts of the world.

    Overall, it’s an idea that sounds smart or funny, but when you break it down, it’s not particularly likely to work out.

    You can’t just plant any ole endangered plants over or around the site. You would have to select plants that are endemic to the area and which specifically are adapted to the conditions at the site where the body is buried. If the endangered plants aren’t native to the area, then they aren’t going to be covered by any laws that would make them illegal to dig up because it would be clear that they aren’t wild plants. And if you don’t match the plants to the specific conditions at the site of the body, then they aren’t going to survive and thus would offer no protection from being disturbed. Also, endangered plants are usually endangered for a reason, it’s not going to be as easy as digging a hole and plopping a potted petunia down into it. You’d probably need to provide some degree of after care to ensure the plants survive long term, which is going to substantially increase the chances of the body being discovered. And that’s all assuming you could even acquire the endangered plants that would work for this purpose or that there are any such plants.




  • There is no precise answer to the associated costs. It’ll be different for every circumstance. There are just too many variables and factors to consider.

    If you have plenty of time, happen to already have good soil and climate, have all the necessary tools on hand, and are just lucky, don’t have to pay for electricity or water, and so on, the financial cost can be essentially 0 (or close to it).

    The more you have to overcome your situation, the more you want to make the cultivation easier, the more you want to maximize yields, and so on – generally that’s going to incur more financial cost.

    There could be upfront costs like installing automated watering systems, amending your soil if it’s not up to par, building raised beds, building fencing or installing edging. Plus, any tools you don’t already have, which might include shovels, snips, wire, a spade, and so on. Even if you’re growing on a balcony you might have to buy pots and potting soil, invest in some shade cloth, put down some saucers to protect your downstairs neighbors from getting dripped on. Those are just a small sample of potential upfront costs.

    Ongoing / annual costs might include things like fertilizers, pesticides, compost/mulch, replacements for any of the upfront stuff that breaks, and even things like cost of water (which is hopefully negligible but not always).

    So, if money is the only “associated cost” here, then it could basically be nothing, but it also wouldn’t be entirely unusual to spend a couple hundred dollars (USD and US costs, I can’t speak for the entire world) and some folks even spend thousands.



  • If you’re having a problem with fire ants it’s likely due to overuse of broad spectrum pesticides. Fire ants have tons of natural predators, but they are usually taken out by broad spectrum pesticides a lot more effectively than the ants.

    Let me preface this by saying, I agree with your overall message about avoiding broad spectrum pesticides in the lawn, but I’m curious where you got this information from your first paragraph?

    I ask because these things seem completely at odds with my experience and with most of the information I’ve read about fire ants.

    I really don’t know anybody that uses broad spectrum pesticides in large areas of their lawns or gardens, but fire ants take over yards anyway. I certainly don’t use them here and none of my neighbors do.

    While fire ants may have tons of natural predators in their native territories, the issue in most of the areas where they are invasive is that there aren’t any/many natural predators that are actually capable of keeping the populations under control. They breed and migrate so aggressively that critters who predate them don’t make a dent. And the native ants don’t have much defense against fire ants.

    Additionally, I’m not sure there are any current nematode products available in the US that are known to be effective against fire ants. Doesn’t mean that won’t change or that there aren’t new products I’m not aware of, though. Just saying, that general consensus is that it’s not a viable solution.


  • Although plenty of people do it, most aren’t treating their whole yard or entire garden in pesticides on a regular basis. Most people who are using pesticides are just spot treating here and there, maybe spraying their home’s foundation to keep out ants and termites and things of that nature.

    People who use pesticides in their lawns will have different reasons and different approaches, but some common reasons (real and imagined, I’m not defending the practice) are typically to control pests like fire ants, Japanese beetles, yellow jacket wasps, termites, fleas and other parasites, and many other things that are region specific.

    And honestly, some people just don’t like bugs. I think that’s ridiculous, but it’s way more common than you might think. Any tiny creature in their house warrants the nuclear option. A wasp nest on the underside of a deck terrifies them.


  • Lightning bugs are really cool! Where I live, people are usually surprised to find out that there are dozens of species native to the region.

    A few years ago, I went on a trip to a different part of the US and they had a species of lightning bug where they all flash synchronously. Instead of flying around the yard, blinking seemingly at random like all the lightning bugs I’d ever seen up to that point, the synchronous ones crawled around in the bushes and trees and then when they flashed, they all flashed at the same time. It was super cool to see.

    Another thing I’ve noticed about adult lightning bugs is that the populations can vary greatly from year to year around here. We might have a year or two with large numbers of them each night during the warmest parts of the year, then a year where they are few and far between.





  • I don’t know that I fully qualify as “gave up using Linux”, but I gave it up for daily personal use, so maybe that counts? I’m definitely not opposed to picking it back up again one day, though! And I do have a Linux device (Steam Deck) that I use frequently, so it’s not all doom and gloom.

    For probably 10+ years, I used various flavors of Linux on my personal laptop. But around 8 years ago or so, my then current laptop was getting old and getting to the point where it needed to be replaced. At the same time, I was also wanting to get back into gaming so I opted for a laptop that came with Windows by default (Linux gaming at the time left a lot to be desired).

    I did try to go the dual boot route with that laptop, but man it sucked. No matter what I tried, the touch screen functionality either didn’t work at all, or it was too buggy to be useful. The graphics card performance was terrible. That was still in the era where finding the right wifi drivers could be a chore, and even then they weren’t exactly the most stable. It was one problem after another. So, I gave up on Linux for personal use, entirely.

    Now I have a different laptop that I specifically verified has decent Linux compatibility and there’s much better Linux support for games but at the end of the day, I just find that my time and interest in tinkering with the OS has diminished, so I’m sticking with what works (even if it’s FAR from perfect).


  • I’m wondering if there is a bit of misunderstanding or miscommunication going on here? I don’t know the statement or the context, but my interpretation based on OPs title is that this person is implying …

    Registered Democrats will switch their party affiliation so that they can vote for Haley to be the Republican nominee for president.

    The implication that enough Democrats will do this that it will affect the outcome is, how shall I put this nicely, wholly unsupported by data or reality. On the other hand, the intellectually dishonest types will actively seek examples of people doing this (or claiming to do it) and use that as “evidence” that it is happening on a wide scale.

    The fact that some number of people will switch parties to vote in a primary is inevitable and happens every presidential election cycle and is not a tool used only by members of one party. You might as well predict that someone will get into a car accident in the USA in the next 24 hours.


  • Disclaimer: Let me be clear, I’m definitely NOT defending the color blind glasses, and especially not the ridiculously expensive and over-priced, scam brand(s). Also, not going to watch videos on YouTube so my comment doesn’t take any context from those links. All that being said …

    Sometimes people don’t realize that color blindness is a spectrum and that there are different types. For example, a lot of people like me might more accurately be described as color vision deficient. To me, I can clearly and easily differentiate between red and green in most practical circumstances, particularly in close range. Things can get dicey from a distance, as well as with very subtle tints or with very dark colors.

    A number of years ago, I purchased a cheap (like less than $20USD) pair of fishing sunglasses (mirrored, polarized sunglasses that typically use bright red, orange, or green tinting of the lenses) right before taking a trip in the fall. When I put those sunglasses on, it was really surprising. All of a sudden I could differentiate between the trees that were dead or which had already dropped their leaves, versus those that were actually bright red. Normally, unless I’m looking at a specific tree from a close distance, the browns, reds, and grays all sort of look the same and blend in. From a distance, like from the top of a mountain looking down into a valley, the fall color change of the leaves is a bit underwhelming normally. With the glasses on, I could actually see individual trees or clusters of trees that were red.

    To be clear, the cheap sunglasses didn’t restore my color vision. I assume it just shifts the spectrum a bit so that colors, which are normally very muted for me, actually stand out in the same way that bright yellows and blues do. And I know that the colors I’m seeing are tinted, so not 100% accurate to what a person with full color vision would see.

    And when I’ve tested the fishing glasses with Ishihara tests (numbers in the colored dots), they do not improve my ability to make those out. So, that’s further evidence that they aren’t actually restoring my color vision. Granted, the fishing sunglasses never marketed themselves that way, where as the expensive scam color vision correcting glasses heavy imply that they are miraculous even if they don’t outright state that they restore color vision.