In my experience, green/metallic beetles are bad news for gardeners. They lay eggs on your plants and the larva destroy them!

No, there are many circumstances in between.

My grandparents both lived in a retirement home for the last few years of their lives. My grandfather died suddenly but my grandmother did not.

My grandmother had a long, gradual decline with dementia. We visited her often and took her out of the retirement home for tea. Her accommodations there were very nice and our family would visit several times per week (grandma had 6 adult children). We would have lunch there and the food was very good. Her dementia meant she could not remember people visiting her but she was not unhappy. She was always happy to see us!

I’m so sorry your grandmother faced miserable circumstances. In Canada we now have legal MAID which I am a supporter of. No one should be forced to live in constant pain without a choice.

Economic crises drive political crises. The trend towards far-right authoritarianism is a global one. People under stress (of many different sorts) favour authoritarianism for some reason.

The pathogen-stress theory of authoritarianism is fairly well studied and has proven robust. There’s similar support for theories of economic stress and poverty driving support for authoritarianism. Population declines can be a major source of economic stress due to the way older generations need to be financially supported by younger workers.

Degrowth supports UBI. Isn’t that a form of passive income?

People eventually retire whether they want to or not. Their body breaks down and they can no longer work. These people need some kind of support or they’re going to die in miserable circumstances.

Wow thanks for sharing! That is beautiful!

I’ve often felt very depressed because I’ve long had the idea that the best days of architecture were behind us. That we’d never have anything beautiful (like the gothic cathedrals of Europe) again and we were doomed to a dystopian feature of steel and glass monstrosities.

This engineered wood and its potential for more natural and beautiful architecture gives me hope!

That is really cool! I didn’t know they were that far along!

Yeah I’ve heard of some kinds of processes where the wood is injected with polymers or something, turning it into a much more solid structure.

I have a coffee table I inherited from my grandfather which is wood encased in some kind of ultra hard epoxy resin. The thing feels like an absolute tank!

Yes and leaving trees alone rather than cutting them down to burn for wood just means they’re going to end up releasing that carbon when they die and rot on the forest floor.

The only way for trees to sequester carbon is turn them into a form that does not rot. In the distant past, that process was geologic. Temperature and pressure turned the wood into fossil fuels which were trapped underground until we started digging them up to burn.

To replicate that process today we’d have to bury a bunch of trees in deep mines or empty oil wells and cap them off to make sure the CO2 doesn’t escape.

Are you asking why American farmers who want to repair their own stuff don’t switch to European equipment?

All the parts would be in metric!

The founders knew what they were doing. This was their way of cashing out some of the company while continuing to run it. All of the private equity tricks are designed to avoid paying taxes in the process.

The U.S. can’t build like China does. Too many stakeholders to satisfy. Labour too expensive. Too many regulations. The high-speed rail line from San Francisco to LA is going to cost more than all of China’s high-speed rail projects combined!

I’d really be interested to see a comparison between the costs of electrifying the rail network vs using synthetic diesel for freight throughout the US.

Unlike cars or semi trucks, diesel-electric locomotives are extremely efficient. On the other hand, electrifying the many thousands of miles of track that run through large, unpopulated areas of the US seems like a monumental challenge that would yield far fewer benefits over electrifying cars.

YouTube! Search for reel mowers.

Even brand new they can be bad if they’re not properly made or adjusted at the factory. Think of a pair of scissors where the blades don’t make good contact. Couldn’t cut newspaper with that!

They’re terrible if they’re poorly maintained. A well maintained and sharpened one is very easy to mow with. The blades cut the grass like scissors!

Ahhh okay. Another approach to insect control (that doesn’t rely on trees) is a predatory bog. Loads of predatory plants as well as water with (insect / amphibian) predators of mosquitoes and flies.

Can be quite beautiful and special!

And before the petrol mower there was the mechanical reel mower. My grandfather had one of these beauties. They take a bit of extra care and maintenance (sharpening, cleaning, oiling) but they do a great job and are much easier to push around than you’d think! Super lightweight and much safer around kids and pets too. Plus they’re basically silent compared to those extremely loud engine varieties (petrol and electric)!

Do you have any trees back there? If so, the next step is to build bat boxes to attract bats to live there. They will eat those abundant insects and be very happy! Eventually it should become less annoying!

Or use the dremel to cut a slot in the end of a flat screwdriver.

It does not evoke child labour to me. My first thought was that they had arrived at the store by tunneling from Africa. The giant iPhones didn’t really register due to their scale incongruity.