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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • There is no actively growing onions in the field. It looks like it’s about ready to seed.

    The brown rows is likely barley. It’s used as a cover crop over sandy soil. Before they plant the onions they spray the field with an herbicide. The beds are cultivated and seeded leaving a few inches of the dead barley.

    The rows of dead barely acts as a windbreak to reduce sandblasting of the young plants with the wind.


  • All farming is bad for nature. There is no such thing as environmentally friendly farming. The “less damaging” methods of farming are “it only destroying 95% of the habitat, not 98%.”

    We could grow everything we need with 1/2 of the land if we banned dry land farming and moved to all irrigated. What’s better? less damaging farming or millions of acres re-wilded.




  • I support the theory that it was the cats who started it. They are also only partially domesticated. When humans began farming grains the rodent population near them exploded. Cats who were less timid around humans got more rodents. Humans seeing the value of having cats fed the cats during times when the rodent population was low.

    If you’ve ever been around feral barn cats this pattern is the same today. They are constantly on the edge of being wild/domesticated.


  • Dairy’s really got their power in the 1940’s-1950’s when most farmers had around 10 head of dairy cows they milked. If was a major source of income to most rural American farmers. These farmers established dairy associations that were and still are highly politically active.

    Most of them established a association fees based upon the amount of milk they produced. So they had a lot of money to spend on lobbying and voting power in rural communities. They then used that power to shape national policy and do national marketing campaigns.

    With the consolidation of the industry since the 1980’s their voting power has declined but the money for lobbying keeps flowing. Since the u.s. government is controlled by legal bribery at this point…


  • The_v@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Be Wholesome@lemmy.worldA welcoming gift
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    1 month ago

    “Seed” in 1910 was not even close to what it is today. This was also likely cereal grains and maybe some pulses. What you could buy was basically grain from the previous year.

    Also the local Coop’s/grain sellers would absolutely give free seed to new immigrants anyways. It was just smart business for them. The new farmers had no place else to sell the harvest but to them. More production = more money for them. A few pennies invested that yielded dollars for years.



  • I was an advanced learner and started college at 16. The only reason I didn’t start at 14 was because I had to get a highschool diploma or GED to qualify for financial assistance. It took me 18 months after acceptance into university to get the adult education diploma.

    Up until then I had moved along with my class, always placed in the advanced courses.

    Basically school sucked for me.

    In my experience being in the 99+% sucks socially growing up and even into adulthood. There is no easy path for these kids. They do not fit in anywhere. There is no “right” path for all of them. Each has to figure it out on their own and suffer through it.


  • Been on my own since I as 17. The first few years were rough to say the least.

    I worked 2 jobs, 30-60 hrs per week and went to college. I shared shitty apartments with some pretty creepy people. I moved so constantly I ended up paying for a post office box so I could get my mail. I did not have a vehicle (no car) so I rode a bike for up to 60 miles per day. Even all that wasn’t enough without government grants and student loans to pay for college.

    Food was something that I ate when I had it. I spent a few months with mybe 4-5 real meals. Cornflakes and ramen where the bulk of my diet for a while.

    I took the first professional job I could find. It was terrible but it paid well. I gained 50lbs to be at a healthy weight the first year. The next few years I jumped around jobs until I landed in one I liked.

    The last few weeks before I graduated college I met my wife. Her family has become mine over the past 25 years.

    Today my income alone puts us in the top 10% of earners. My wife makes close to the same. At many crucual times in our lifes we’ve taken advantage of government assistance. To be blunt, it’s not possible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You need a helping hand once in a while no matter how small.



  • I have gotten flamed a few times for telling the Linux fanboys the hard truth.

    If I have to hit Terminal even once with an average setup the OS is not ready for mainstream use. No exceptions. It has to work out of the box on the newest systems.

    I use Linux the same way that you have: for a few applications that need a rock solid stable system. Once you get the damn thing setup, it truly is wonderful. Stable, reliable, easy to use. But getting there… Fuck that.

    I think I had one clean distro install where everything worked. The PC was 7 years old when I installed it.


  • Mac did have a better OS than Win 95 -Win98 It was smoother and crashed less.

    The difference was that Windows still ran DOS programs, 5.25" floppy disks etc… They made the decision to maintain backwards compatibility.

    Mac decided to drop support regularly for what they considered “outdated software and technology.” For example: when USB drives came out they canceled support for 3.5" floppies in their OS. Machines that had a 3.5" drive installed could no longer use it. Put a floppy drive in and nothing happened.

    Although Mac was a smoother more stable OS, windows had more functionality and greater compatability. Windows was a far superior product because of it. Even with the regular apearance of the blue screen of death.

    Linux at the time also suffered from being a terminal based OS. Too much like DOS for way too long. I used it for specific tasks where it excelled at.


  • My mother who I haven’t seen or spoken to in decades was a horrible excuse of a human being. She loved to sew and spent tons of money we didn’t have on it.

    As a teenager, I figured out how to sharpen scissors.

    I would deliberately use my mom’s expensive fabric scissors in front of her to get her to scream (I was taller than her so the backhand across the face wasn’t an option). Then when she was gone I would give them a quick sharpening before she used them for fabric.

    I would constantly give her shit about how they were still sharp.

    Soon everyone in the house used the amazing “never dull” fabric scissors for everything. I sharpened them weekly in secret (only takes 2-3 minutes).

    Then I moved out.

    The drama that unfolded a month later was truly epic.




  • The studies have shown it’s not specifically red wine that has health benefits. It’s the alcohol when dosed correctly.

    Like most drugs, the dosage really matters. Health effects with alcohol follow a J shaped curve. It starts with an initial health benefit, followed by negative health effects as the dosage increases.

    1 drink per day for women and 2 drinks for men is the absolute maximum limit for health benefits. Any more is overdosing and causing harm.

    Overdosing causes deaths every year from both from chronic usage (alcoholism) and acute usage (alcohol poisoning).