Cries in Texan

I think about the Lucky 10,000 XKCD comic all the time.

The education system as I lived through it in Texas was actively hostile to saying you didn’t know, it was treated as being worse than being wrong or guessing. You can tell by the results allllllll around us.

I have worked with a few gen z interns/fresh grads, and some younger millennials (I am a 1990 kid) and its interesting… Some of them have been very successful at passing the tests but have no mechanical aptitude at all. Some have been technically literate on first glance, then proven to be just confidently incorrect. In general though, it seems they just didn’t grow up being interested in how things worked like I did. It could be isolated to my small sample size or it could be a general trend. They also don’t seem to make connections across disciplines as easily either but again, that could just be a time in service thing at this point and not a generational trait.

I have not been super impressed with the new ones we get when we get them, some of them have been quick learners though and have impressed me with their adaptability. I am a huge proponent of proper mentorships or rotational programs and that is something that seems to get overlooked with younger grads in my experience.

One thing that really annoys me though, is that when prompted with something they don’t know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don’t know. Saying I don’t know is a completly acceptable answer as long as it is followed up with “but I will find out” or “can you help/explain it”. Falling back to a first principle approach and talking through it is also valid but just making up some shit doesnt fly with me.

Not to mention, he is an immature narcissistic idiot, by MULTIPLE accounts (as well as my own personal opinion). Think about how someone who actually knows the system could use this unrestrained power that has been grifted to him… Its not going to be good. The amount of stuff these shitstains have fucked up is going to take at least a generation to un-fuck assuming power is restored to the populous in the next election which is a big assumtion…

There is a good Patagonia short film about dam removal if you want to burn an hour or so. DamNation

I’m so glad we are both from that one town. How do you spell it again? I always get it wrong.

What program are you using for your rpg campaigns?

Minecraft server is fairly universally supported.

Have you seen Earth? Can you blame whatever for putting us in a void?

I don’t think something of this risk should be left to individual, non-publicly maintained or controlled devices. This is specifically an area where the time to act is short and oftentimes the public is either in the river or river adjacent so they wouldn’t have their phone.

That said, there should be better cell service for the reasons you listed, I just don’t think it is the solution to the loss of life here.

By no means am I an expert so do some reading for your area. That said, here is how I set up my space.

I am a big fan of planting stuff that you can eat, that attracts polinators, and is low maintenance.

We have a couple varieties of basil that we let flower that brings bees in and are perennials and rosemary that flowers I have some really big mint plants that the bees love too. I basically do nothing to any of those and just let them ride. I have a couple of citrus plants that flower and bring in lots of insects. I planted grape vines that the birds love and have been really fun for my kids. They also loved the blackberry vines.

Any time I have the big clumps of clover in the lawn part of our yard, I move them to the flower beds. We also have several jasmine plants that crawl around.

I tend to do the local heirloom wildflower mixes in our side yard areas which was super great to cover up the utility boxes in our yard.

Heirloom stuff is great, I have several plants that I have re-grown from seeds inside fruit that the pests got to. 100% recommend.

I like to keep citronella and lemongrass around to help with the mosquitos. The lemongrass probably doesnt do anything unless you burn it but you can pick the citronella leaves and rub them between your hands then rub your hands on your skin and that seems to work.

Keep a fountain or bird bath around for the bugs/birds. If you can do it low to the ground, you can get frogs and other stuff too.

I tend to keep some brush in a pile for some of the other critters like salmanders, the little garden snakes, skinks, etc. You can get rats/mice though so ymmv. Rock piles are also good.

When the oak/ash trees drop leaves, I mulch them with the mower and collect them for use around the tree bases, that is supposed to be good for fireflys and stuff.

We have not watered our garden at all this year.

If you can find native plants, use them because they are already adapted to your area.

I tried to do microclover for our yard but since we had grass already it didn’t really take off. I also tried using buffalo grass with the same result. I do tend to let our grass go longer, its better for water conservation and I refuse to use clean water for grass growth.

For compost, we do table scraps mixed with leaves and yard clippings. I didn’t do it properly and ended up accidentally planting 10,000 papaya plants in our yard that the freeze killed off.

I have some blue salvia looking tree thing that is constantly covered in pollinators that grew super quick. They plant them on the highway medians around Houston and its been awesome. The flower smell great too.

Tangentially related question:

What is the latency in the soil for this stuff? I spent 8 years working on getting my yard back to a pollinator friendly environment but we are moving now and starting over with a basic grass yard. I am assuming the previous owners were spraying all kinds of shit as we are out in the burbs.

Yeah, I was trying to tell the poster above why a cell message or triangulated gps signal wouldn’t work. This area is remote and needs proper infrastructure with dedicated alarms to function in a safety critical capacity.

There are already tornado sirens in the area around Seguin, so clearly they can afford some kind of warning, but then using budget as the reasons to avoid spending on this kind of thing has always been a bad faith argument.

A lot of that area is remote or in canyons so cell service is spotty at best.

Edit: that is to say, you need a dedicated system specifically for warnings like this with real power sources, physical alarm devices, and either hard wired data systems, or data systems that are on radio towers high enough up to actually function and function properly in bad weather.

The bill was rejected so recently, you don’t even have to adjust for inflation.