mythrwy

If you remember the aftermath of the Iraq2 invasion (which a lot of people claimed was about oil) gas prices did not plummet at all but the reverse. Gas doubled at the pump, maybe slightly more.

Maybe not fun but effective is even better.

Great hobby!

A couple of things about corn. It might not be soil at issue. Germination depends on correct temperature and moisture. Too much moisture the seed will rot or not have enough air to germinate. Too little moisture it won't trigger germination. Too deep it won't germinate, too shallow and germination won't happen either because it will dry out instead of staying moist. Seeds vary in depth they require and some even require light to germinate (doesn't apply to corn). It's a bit of an art figuring out what "even moisture until germination" is, and this varies based on soil type. Timing of planting with correct temperature is important.

Each kernel of corn has one silk. The silk is analogous to a Fallopian tube with pollen traveling down into the ovary (or kernel of corn in this case). If you have an ear of corn with only a few kernels it's often because pollen didn't land on all the silks. For this reason corn is usually planted in blocks. It's wind pollinated so wind shakes pollen off the tassels or male flowers at the top, down onto the silk. But if you just have one corn plant in isolation, or a row in isolation it's easier for the pollen to just blow away or miss. Planting in blocks or "array of arrays" configuration helps the pollen to reach the silk more uniformly as pollen from the surrounding plants is released.

I'm really hoping you mean substantive not subversive.

What's the simple solution here? Starve the majority of humanity to death with permaculture nonsense?

If they do that they don't get paid for the service the subsequent month.

When I lived in an apartment with no washer I got sick of using the laundrymat because it was expensive and kind of nasty. So I set up my own washing setup after some research.

I got something called a "breathing washer" which looks kind of like a toilet plunger and a big tote which I put in the bathtub for use. These breathing washers work really well and in my opinion get your clothes much cleaner than agitating and spinning.

Then I got something called a "spin dryer" that is basically a small centrifuge that spins a lot faster than a regular washing machine and leaves fabrics like light polyester nearly dry coming out.

Finally I got an inflatable plugin dryer.

This setup was more work than a regular washing machine but maybe not more work than bundling up clothes and taking to the laundrymat and sitting there for an hour or two. One thing I really liked about it was short time to process. I could have washed and dried clothes much faster than a conventional washer/dryer setup.

I've been in a house for a long time now and admittedly having a washer and dryer is much nicer and less work, but that setup was acceptable and much better than laundromats for whatever it's worth if someone is in a similar situation.

I see makes sense. Sorry for being "the well actually" guy.

Borlaug was a very important figure in global food security but he was a plant breeder, not the guy(s) who figured out how to fix nitrogen from the air into fertilizer. Nitrogen people were Haber and Bosch.

Millions of probably do owe their very existence to these men though, agree with that.

However part of me (maybe a slightly misanthropic part?) wonders if it might be a bit like feeding stray cats, and now we have a huge herd of cats that are rapidly outstripping the ultimate carrying capacity of their environment and it doesn't end well. But since I'm one of the cats, I say we just go with it and see what happens.

If it's stuff I have have been doing for years and isn't terribly complex I've found its generally quick to skim review. I don't need to read every line I can glance at it, know it's a loop and why, a function call or whatever. If I see something unusual I take that as an opportunity to learn.

I've seen LLMs write some really bad code a few times lately it seems almost worse than what they were doing 6 or 8 months ago. Could be my imagination but it seems that way.

That is also how things wind down and progress ceases and civilizations decay. You need a measure of conflict and difference to move things forward.

I do agree however this needs to be controlled and within bounds so as not to be totally destructive and also because you can't get anywhere with everyone pulling in different directions.

In evolutionary terms, variation is the basis for natural selection. You have no variation then you have nothing to select from.

Cheapness implies volume which we are already seeing. Volume implies less impact per piece because there are only so many total view hours available.

Stated another way, the more junk that gets churned out, the less people will take a particular piece of junk seriously.

And if they churn out too much junk (especially obvious manipulative falsehoods) people will have little choice but to de-facto regard the entire body of output as junk. Similar to how many people feel about modern mainstream media (correctly or not it's how many feel) and for the same reasons.

Not cigarettes I can't!

So you aren't an adult until your early 30's and you are an old slow guy not worth interviewing less than 10 years later.

New Mexico (where I live) is dead last in education out of all 50 states. They are currently advertising for elementary school teachers between 65-85K per year. Summers off. Nice pension. In this low cost of living state that is a very good salary, particularly the upper bands.

I don't think it's a money issue at this point.

There's objectively a lot of reasons to do that (New Mexico citizen here) but I'm surprised this is the one you chose.

That depends on who you are as a parent though. It could be the strangers are lifeline and positive force on the child's development compared to what you are.

A lot of times people assume in these conversation the parents are put together individuals who think about their child's future or even care. And from what I've observed I don't think that is universally the case.

You have a point but I live in New Mexico. It's not like many of these moms are suddenly going to become stellar parents with a $2K tax credit. The state has real issues with poverty, education and work ethic and it's often generational.

Giving children some stability, role models and nutrition early in life seems like a pretty good investment from my perspective.

If the state pulls it off without the usual mismanagement and graft remains to be seen but I applaud the effort.

But how will they know what they like if they haven't read it?

When I was in elementary school in the early 1970s I went to a very rural school in a remote community in the Western USA that had 2 rooms, 3 grades for each room. The whole school might have had 40 or 50 kids tops. The building was built in the 1800s and even had the bell at the top.

Anyway it was the best lunch program ever. Everything was made from scratch and there was an old lady soup Nazi that ran the kitchen.

One of the things that made it really special is the older kids did all the work under the supervision of old battle axe soup nazi. You would have assigned days to work the cafeteria and wash dishes etc. And let me tell you, that lady made sure things were done to food safety standards and this was before corporeal punishment and grabbing a kid by the ear was prohibited.

Working the cafeteria was actually one of the most educational things I got from that school. I learned how to really wash dishes properly and fast and that lesson has served me well over the years.

Communicating in pictographs

They borrowed (or rented for $1 for the duration of the war) binoculars from US citizens for WWI. Then returned them after the war was over. Patriotic people sent them in.

Same way you teach kids to swim! Drop them into run level 3 and show them the man pages.

Indeed is is very easy to lead the LLM to the answer, often without realizing you are doing so.

I had a long ongoing discussion about possible alternate career paths with ChatGPT in several threads. At that point it was well aware of my education and skills, had helped clean up resumes, knew my goals, experience and all that.

So I said maybe I'll look at doing X. "Now you are thinking clearly! This is a really good fit for your skill set! If you want I can provide a checklist.". I'm just tossing around ideas but look, GPT says I can do this and it's a good fit!

After 3 idea pivots I started getting a little suspicious. So I try to think of the thing I am least qualified to do in the world and came up with "Design Women's Dresses". I wrote up all the reasons that might be a good pivot (i.e. Past experience with landscape design and it's the same idea, you reveal certain elements seductively but not all at once, matching color palettes, textures etc). Of course GPT says "Now you are really thinking clearly! You could 100% do this! If you want I can start making a list of what you will need to produce you first custom dresses". It was funny but also a bit alarming.

These tools are great. Don't take them too seriously, you can make them say a lot of things with great conviction. It's mostly just you talking to yourself in my opinion.

Interesting. I have been feeding my chickens ground flax seed and pecans (there are a lot of pecan orchards in the area so it's easy to get old nuts which I just smash and let the chickens pick through them). I don't have any quantitative data but I'm hopeful it produces healthier eggs. At minimum it produces very tasty eggs.

They have been screwing over their user base for a long time though incrementally.

You are getting kicked out of the donglegate conference now.

I don't know about other people, but I can cook almost as fast as dealing with a delivery service. Most meals I eat take about 15 minutes to make.

I personally have never ordered food from any delivery service and only a few times a year from any restaurant at all, because I know how to cook and worse case, make a peanut butter sandwich.

But if people are going to order food to go, is it better to have everyone driving to pick it up or better to have one driver picking up and delivering multiple orders at once?

I mean, in a world of finite resources and pollution, which is better?

The next step is to build little robot kitchens in the vehicles and drive around preparing what people order en route. (kidding. maybe).