I use the agricultural suppliers for most of the basics: compost, potting mix, fertilizer etc. If you can store the larger quanties it is much cheaper. The last 1,000lbs of compost was $80.

For little things like pots etc, shop around. They sometimes are at places you wouldn’t expect. The best pots are not at the nursery but at a local home decor place. I got some nice ones a few years ago at my local grocery store.

The best seedling flats are at the hydroponic store where the clerks have red eyes…

Indeterminate greenhouse tomatoes or parthenocarpic cucumbers (Lebanese types) can succeed during the late spring, to early fall. This is when the light levels are strong enough that even indirect light is enough. Squash not so much. If you could get some of the winter varieties grown in the greenhouses in southern Spain, maybe.

All of the leafy greens are possible year round - lettuce, spinach, kale, etc.

For some permanent greenery houseplants are an excellent choice. Ferns, african violets, mosteras, philodendrons, kalanchoe, etc would all do well in that spot. Sydney very rarely frosts so you have a wide choice to choose from. Pretty much everything will work. For watering make sure you good drainage on the pots on only water they are dry.

In pre-industrialized nations the amount of resources it takes to raise each child is minimal. People have so many children because the resource requirement for each one is minimal or even a positive addition to the income of the parents.

In industrialized nations that math reverses. The amount of resources each child requires to become a functioning member of society increases dramatically (up to 10,000x more). Children are a pretty much universally a net cost to the parents not a source of income.

The birthrate is Japan and S. Korea have plummeted recently because of extreme wealth inequality.

S. Korea - the bulk of the countries economy is controlled by 5 families. The average 20 year old is in debt, working obscene hours per week and is barely making ends meet.

Japan - Has had 30 years of wage stagnation as the wealth inequality has steadily been growing. Young Japanese face the same issue as the S. Koreans. Long hours of work for little pay and no benefits.

As the standard of living rises, the birthrate initially increases. This was the boomer years.

Then birthrate falls because an industrialized society requires more resources per child. Eventually you reach a period of stagnation when the resources available match the number of children born.

Then in all capatilist societies, the standard of living declines which triggers the birthrate to free fall.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/jpn/japan/birth-rate

Japan peaked in the 1940’s, stagnanted in the '60-'70s and has been in free fall ever since.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/kor/south-korea/birth-rate

South Korea peaked in the 1950’s, stagnated in the '80s and 90’s and has been in free fall since.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/birth-rate

The United States peaked in the 40’s-50’s. Stagnanted from the 1970’s to early 2000’s (bouyed by 1st generation immigration) and is now in free fall (due to immigration idiocracy).

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/fra/france/birth-rate

France followed the U.S. due with an extended period of stagnation due to 1st generation immigrants. It also has had a much slower decline in the standard of living versus the other countries which has bouyed up the birthrate.

Not likely.

Fixing the birthrate is pretty simple in theory. The government needs to meet the needs of people having kids. The details are a little more complicated.

In order to have more kids in their 20’s people need:

A higher income in their 20’s. If they work full time they deserve to be able to afford a 3 bedroom place, food, etc…

A place to live - Build affordable housing that people can own and build a life. These need to be 3-4 bedroom places that one income can cover.

Medical care: free quality medical care to cover little things like birth cost and the doctor visits a child needs.

Time: Hard to make babies when you are working 60+ hours a week. Mandatory 40 or less work week. 2 months of vacation every year.

Childcare - Free or heavily subsidized childcare for working parents. Currently childcare for 2 children is more than the net average income for one person in many areas. Earlier retirement programs are also highly effective.

Quality schools and education: ban private schools, invest heavily in public schools increasing teacher wages and requirements, reducing classroom sizes, and providing quality educational material. Free college and trade schooling as well.

Hope: Stop fucking up the planet for temporary gains. If we started to reverse our environmental damaging behaviors more people would be willing to have kids

Well that just made my tentative plans to retire to Mexico firm up a bit more.

I setup a raspberry pi 5 minicomputer box with a small hard drive and Pi OS installed. I then browse to whatever pirate streaming service I want and use Firefox with the adblock installed. Works like a charm.

The RII K06 mini keyboard works very well.

I originally got the system to run tradeshow videos at the booth. It does that very well and is quick and easy to setup.

I think this is more metal fatigue due to time and use. This happens pretty routinely to metal handled shop brooms in my experience. I have done this with 2 or 3 of them.

In the normal use of these brooms you apply pressure from opposite directions constantly. This back and forth pressure eventually fatigues the metal.

Wooden handled ones tend to last longer.

It’s called Bi-color corn. It’s made by creating a hybrid between white and yellow corn inbreds. The seeds are all yellow. The resulting corn (F2 seeds) display a yellow:white ratio of 3:1.

The color has zero impact on flavor, texture or sweetness. It’s all for visual impact.

30+ years ago in school I was tasked with writing an essay on Israel. In just a few days of researching I noticed that everything the Palestinians were doing looked like desperate guerrilla warfare against a superior force. Their tactics made no sense otherwise.

That’s when I asked… Why? And started researching what Israel was doing. Holy Fuck… Today it’s more obvious with their open genocide but they have been doing this shit for 50+ years quietly. This isn’t something new. This isn’t the current leadership. This is a fundemental cultural belief that they are superior and can kill, maim, abuse and steal from any other ethnic group. The zionist group is as bad or worse than any other extremist group around.

The survivor one was the best.

I took every history course this professor taught even though I was a science major.

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

Most of my college professors had very little impact on my life. His classes fundementally changed how I understand the world to this day.

No severance doesn’t effect your eligibility for unemployment. It does often reduce the number of claims however. Many people live off the severance until in runs out, then claim employment. You can also claim unemployment while still actively receiving severance pay.

Severance is usually tied to a non-disclosure agreement. If they want to enforce them, compensation is usually required in most states.

What’s it named Cuy?

Tunis, Tunisia. The old town was something else.

Two lawyers got in a pissing contest on developing the land they owned.

My great-grandfather apparently had a story about it. It involved lots of booze, a prostitute, and a horse. Then again most of his stories had the same theme so the truthfulness of the story is up for debate.

Missoula is a bit odd on a few things. I attended Hellgate elementary - yes that’s the name of the school.

A very long time ago, when I was in college and a few years after, I biked everywhere. I did upwards of 40 miles per day for a while between work and school. My normal cruising speed at the end of the time was 20-22mph on the flat. I could max out closer to 30 mph on a sprint. I was 10 miles from school and could do it in 20 minutes if needed.

Today, same bike, my cruising speed is around 5mph. I had lady in her 80’s speed walk past me the last time I was out.

This is why I have learned to immediately max out the RAM on the motherboard for my wife when I replace her machine.

Some of these webpages are absolutely stupid in how much they load. She likes to have 40 or 50 tabs open all the time.

Her current desktop has 64gb

The question is two-fold. How secure do you want the password to be determines what system to use.

For example:

Banking - I never store a password or username for these. It’s always one I can remember. The password is lengthy, multi-factor authentification is turned on etc… I don’t trust any system.

Finanial webpages other than banks, , taxes, healthcare, etc, stuff that would hurt me personally if stolen, I use a stand alone password manager.

Anything else goes into Firefox password manager. Stuff I don’t give a fuck about if somebody hacks my password.

I went to a very small public university campus that a few years before was associated with a massive state university. They were still mostly independent but we’re getting all sorts of pressure to conform to the larger universities policies on research etc. At my school the professors all taught and did little to no research.

As part of their ongoing arguments they had all juniors/seniors in both schools take a standardize tests at the end of their core degree courses for a year. My tiny university averaged 90th percentile. The large university averaged 30th percentile. The difference having highly qualified dedicated teachers.