jkf
3hr ago
Precursors AIUI are regulated such that most viable pathways are difficult these days -- so you pretty much need to buy those from bikers (or whoever runs things in your area) and they will take an interest in the results. If you know some bikers this could still be an OK career path!
jkf
14hr ago
Looking at the AAQCs from August 2022, something like half of those people are still posting here regularly.
"Losing ~50% of the best posters" over the course of two years does seem like kind of a big deal? (and I do think we lost a lot of good people in the years prior to that, albeit for different reasons)
jkf
14hr ago
Potential emergency home remedy for angina I guess? Keep your powder dry and your bullet-puller at the ready!
jkf
1d ago
Biden and Pence were not President -- every other President has been allowed to go through his papers at his leisure and select what to return and when. Obama probably still has stuff. It seems like a fairly civilized policy.
jkf
1d ago
Nothing I’ve seen suggests that Trump was innocent, or that a random citizen could get away with doing the same thing.
Probably not a random person, but every other President in history -- which does seem a bit unfair?
jkf
2d ago
Are they the sort to stand around at the entrance to federal workplaces checking ID badges, though?
jkf
2d ago
This does not align with my experience at all -- all of the old dudes I've ever know are proud of their 'zero sick days since 2005 (or whatever)' and as I stack up the years I find that frequency and severity of respiratory illness gets less and less. (including my covid experience FWIW)
I always chalked this up to increased immune system experience with various circulating viruses; ie. previous exposure to similar things to whatever's going around.
Recent example: My kid returned from a trip and was totally knocked on his ass for a week upon his return -- not covid, but hit him worse than when he had that. Around when he recovered, my wife got it almost as bad for about another week. Me? Nada. I just assumed it was something I'd already picked up in my travels -- which just accumulates with age.
jkf
2d ago
Yes, and Zorba's team is making mistakes right now, resulting in #2 & 3 occurring with a concerning number of interesting posters.
jkf
4d ago
With all due respect, "I do what I want" is not a viable approach to building a quality space.
You are focussing on this part because the initial warning was indefensible -- the content was polite, just that the other poster didn't like it. She should absolutely continue 'doing what she wants' -- the mods are not gods.
jkf
4d ago
Just make IoT doodad manufacturers liable for bad things that happen with them and the problem will sort itself out, no state intervention with the potential for universal surveillance and totalitarian control needed.
How about a government funded Red Team who's raison d'etre is taking out insecure household devices? Could be a nice cyber-warfare bootcamp; I can certainly think of worse uses for government funds. The problem with letting the market take its course is that IoT devices are a low-value target for black hattery -- classic case for governments protecting the commons!
jkf
4d ago
Whatever man -- that's the reason, and she's not wrong. "Turn up the heat" is an interesting approach to dealing with evaporative cooling -- if there were a (metaphorical) retort somewhere capturing all of the quality people who've had enough around here, it's getting to the point where that would be a better place to hang out.
jkf
5d ago
IIRC there was a (bad) tempban that may have led her to conclude that the place is beyond hope.
jkf
6d ago
The land used for the grass and the cereals could be used for something else (growing trees, for example).
No, it couldn't -- cows (in the US) primarily graze in a place that has been know for hundreds (maybe more) of years as "The Great Plains" -- trees don't grow there.
Anyways, trees don't fix carbon either -- it doesn't really matter what you grow there, it's going to rot eventually.
Moreover the grass produces CO2 if it's not eaten by some other animal while the cow produces CH4. CH4 has a stronger greenhouse effect than CO2 and then it quite rapidly degrades and becomes CO2.
Actually proving that this made any difference would require writing out (and balancing) all of the reactions involved, including the ones taking place in the cow -- just saying "cows produce methane and that's even worse than CO2" doesn't really say anything about the quantities involved. I'm not going to do that work, because I'd be quite surprised if it didn't pencil out as a wash -- but you are welcome to write it up and if the methane from a cow's farts ends up significantly more impactful than all of the carbon contained in the grass a cow would eat over the course of a year I will eat a steak my words.
jkf
6d ago
Cows don't eat trees (much) though -- they eat grass, and after a year that grass is turning back into CO2 one way or another.
jkf
6d ago
Like I say I'm not the hugest fan of intensive dairying, so fine if true -- but I do think they will run into trouble with energy inputs. One cow can generate a truly shocking amount of milk, and they don't really eat that much. The problem (to me) is that the demand for milk products is also truly shocking -- so anyway you slice it there's going to be some shocking resource usage going on.
jkf
7d ago
Tell her that Amazon screwed up, you were trying to order something by Ted Kaczynski...
jkf
7d ago
Carnivorous birds are hard to feed -- I've tried dried mealworms and grub-infused suet, the ones in my neighbourhood turn up their noses.
On the plus side they seem to mostly do alright on their own; lots of bugs out there I guess. You can get refrigerated/dormant mealworms at bait shops which supposedly you can put in a tray and the birds will go for them once they warm up and start wriggling around -- I haven't tried it, but it would be my next step if there were a bird around that seemed to be in trouble.
jkf
7d ago
There. Is that accurate?
Sure, it's pretty much how it's done in the US.
But it needs to be super clear that this is not in any way instrumental to the production of large amounts of beef -- if those cattle stayed on the range for four months instead of going to the feedlot, they would still constitute a lot of beef. Somewhat less, and quite a bit less marketable (to US tastes) -- but if you banned feedlots tomorrow you would still be able to afford a burger.
I'll also yield to you, for now- that the grazing fields can't be repurposed. I'm skeptical of this but I don't have the means to do a counterfactual analysis on every field at this time.
On this part I guess you just need to spend some time out west? Most of the time when you run across ranging beef cattle it's not even anywhere you might call a 'field' -- it's like literal woods where I am, and in other parts borderline desert. You don't need to believe me, but you could maybe cross-reference BLM leases (in the US) with Google Earth or something? Working ranches will keep some self-owned pasture around that's more fertile, and grow some hay and stuff for winter feed -- but water is a problem out here. Hay will grow a crop a year with ~zero inputs and no irrigation -- I don't know too many crops for human consumption like that.
If you wanna talk about high-impact use of fertile land, I'd turn your gaze towards dairy cattle. Their lives seem pretty pleasant, but goddamn they eat a lot of corn and produce a lot of shit. The footprint of the cows isn't that much, but the acres and acres of silage and alfalfa could be better used if you ask me. People seem to like milk for some reason though.
jkf
8d ago
Factory farms for beef basically do not exist, especially not in the united states -- the feedlots that you mention take cows that have lived on grasslands their entire lives and fatten them up a bit. This makes them, well, fattier which humans prefer, and finishes them a little faster, but you could absolutely feed the demand for beef on grass alone with minimal cost impact. (particularly compared to artificial meat)
In fact... the 'free' grasslands also have opportunity costs, since land is a finite and often fungible resource for farming.
The free grasslands look like forest/scrub -- farming other things there is not economically viable, otherwise they wouldn't be free grasslands.
You have been grievously, grievously misinformed -- please don't spread it here.
jkf
8d ago
The issue is that we can't have 10 billion peole living a western lifestyle on a finite planet.
Have you tried, like -- not doing that?
jkf
8d ago
"what if the proles hate our guts so much that they ban cultured meat out of spite?"
What if the proles have caught on to the fact that it won't be 'tasty cheap nutritious cultured meat,' it will be 'expensive goo of dubious quality', and used as leverage in support of bans/punitive taxation on regular meat -- the justification being that 'modern alternatives exist, eat shit your beans, proles'.
jkf
8d ago
Aren't you like, standing right by the door in front of all the other people? Just step on the bus dude.
jkf
9d ago
It seems old enough that O.G. copies should be available... somewhere?
I'd send it to you myself but I'd need to fire up some old K8 box to find it on the hard drive...
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