American, white, liberal, redneck gun nut here. If you’re talking about “defund the police”, that’s yet another idiot liberal slogan that misses the mark. The idea is to take police funds and pay for workers who can handle situations police should never have been sent to. Want to kill yourself? Call the cops!

The far right loves cops because cops are on their side, or are perceived to be. To put it bluntly, guns are for shooting marauding black people, not white people. See all the stories about white people being shocked when law enforcement doesn’t go their way? Yeah.

Also, I suspect people who are anti-gun have never had violence inflicted upon them, or cops who are far away, or haven’t had a bear wander in the dog door, or haven’t had an enraged redneck struggling to be polite because they’re visibly armed. In related news, my MAGA neighbor came stomping down here to kick my ass, turned right the fuck around when I went inside for my .45.

I could write all night on the subject, but let me leave it at this: Now is not the fucking time for Americans to disarm themselves. The only reason fascists haven’t run us completely over is that they know there will be a real chance we’ll fucking kill them. Look where the ICE raids are happening, in the places where guns are the most suppressed.

Yes, this all sucks, but it’s where we’re at in America.

https://old.lemmy.world/c/chadmctruthstruth

I see it this way: If there are enough dumbasses willing to pay, go for it. I choose not to participate. OTOH, idiots paying subscriptions can hurt us all through enshittification.

On Nextdoor.com I brought it up that Trump’s admin was trashing NOAA and the NWS, which we literally live and die by in Florida. One woman was quite proud to pay $15 for her Accuweather app. “And where do you think they get their data?”

I dunno, Malaysia has been kicking the shit out of the US on trade for decades now. End the madness!

OK, I was being a smartass, but it appears we trade more with Malaysia than I expected. In any case, this dumbass still doesn’t understand “trade deficit”.

In the US our colleges and universities typically have what they call extension offices that can tell you all about the local environment. Anything like that where you’re at?

From Gemini, but it’s factual:

A local extension office, often called a Cooperative Extension office, is a branch of a land-grant university that provides research-based information and educational programs to the local community. These offices are staffed by experts who offer guidance on various topics, including agriculture, gardening, food safety, natural resources, and 4-H youth development. They act as a bridge between academic research and practical application, helping individuals and communities solve problems and improve their lives.

Lots of great advice here! I’ve learned the most just by getting out in the woods and swamps and looking. Still so much I’m ignorant of! A great project for you, that I’ve been slacking on, is putting events into a calendar or tracking app. “May 15th, dragonflies are back.” “June 1st, banana spiders back.” Stuff like that.

OK, that seems smart. But why would it need updates? Been in IT 30-years, I get updates, but something that simple should have been hammered out before it left the factory.

That far north?! I never saw them in the wild until I moved to Florida. That’s blowing my mind, would have said it was impossible.

The scale is throwing me. Differences of:

400

200

200

500

500

500

500

“Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.”

The ending of I Am Legend tells us all we need to know about letting focus groups dictate cinema.

Can you imagine a Tarantino movie being run through a popularity filter?!

Get the water!

Yeah, you gotta work like that, if you’re the one starting the business. Talking to a client who owned several businesses one night over drinks. He said you have to work your ass off for a year and-a-half to two years, then it pretty much runs itself.

One might note that he wasn’t talking about his employees working like that.

I need to learn how to use those properly. I always fuck it up.

<AOC in the crosshairs>

Send it.

American here. My nearest grocery store is 68x that far.

Talking to a good friend 20 years ago, very smart guy, and he was thinking we already artificial gravity.

Every one I’ve seen or replaced was just that. No idea what the wax thing is about so I looked it up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_thermostatic_element

OP’s right!

Fax is too simple to completely die.

Read that post right before this one. Small world.

Voodoo! I had no idea.