What type of soil do you have? To simplify, let’s limit it to three choices: sandy/loose, loamy/rich, or clay/rocky/stiff?

My biggest advice is to use your own tree leaves and any lawn clippings that weren’t mulched back into the yard to make compost and NOT use things like MicracleGro that add salts to your soil because – while the initial crop may benefit – the salts will linger in that soil after the nutrients are absorbed and you won’t be able to keep using that soil if you keep adding those chemical fertilizers. You don’t have to go crazy about composting. Just pile the leaves together and let it sit. If you have lots of leaves, make your pile a row-shape so it is as long as you want, but no thicker than 3-4 feet. Thicker than that means oxygen can’t reach the center.

I learned that from this radio show back when I gardened: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1087444113/you-bet-your-garden

That guy has all kinds of advice for the serious gardener, too, and I was never serious about it. There are people who actually FLUFF their compost! Can you imagine going out every week or so to toss around dead plant matter with a pitch fork just for aeration? Noooooo! I just let it sit and didn’t worry that it would take longer.

If you want to go beyond the pot and have a spot with sun, I recommend trying strawberries. Get live plants and pop them in the ground, then wait until the next spring. They are an easy early crop and they will replenish themselves with runners so you can get years of enjoyment out of them without having to buy more plants. Also, home grown are going to taste a thousand times better than anything in the grocery store. It looks like Maine has already figured out which grow best there. Note some are more disease resistant than others. https://extension.umaine.edu/highmoor/research/strawberry-variety-testing-at-highmoor-farm/

Other easy crops (2 for pots, the rest for ground):

• cherry tomato – does well in big pots
• rosemary – extremely pottable! then take it inside for the winter. I’m told this is a winning strategy, but my rosemary always dies in the winter despite coming inside.
• mint – not just easy to grow, but hard to get rid of once in the groud
• garlic – my yard is too rocky for garlic, but I grew it for years anyway. It even survived getting mowed down several times.
• leeks – mine were scraggly, but they made for gorgeous flowers so I let them go to seed and lo! They kept coming back from seed on their own! https://extension.umn.edu/vegetables/growing-leeks
• lettuce – cold weather crop. Lettuce becomes bitter as it matures, but you can throw seeds on the ground in the early spring and harvest before summer. If you miss the window and it starts to ‘bolt’ (gets tall), let it go to seed and more will come up next year.

I want his press secretary give a conference TODAY and say something like:

I want The Press to engage in a thought experiment with me. Imagine if our president came out and said, "The Supreme Court has granted Presidents immunity from prosecution in matters of the official duty. Well, it is my official duty to warn America that the Court is corrupt. It has been rotted out by folks like Harlan Crow who has corrupted the already dubious ethics of Clarence Thomas into the little stooge he’s become. Both these men should be dead. So, too, should Altio and Kavanaugh. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if I woke up tomorrow to news there were three particular open seats for what was once the highest court. Heck, I might even pardon the guilty. Of course Congress would try to block me from appointing replacement Justices, but it is possible that folks like Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordon, Ted Cruz and others might meet with some tragically fatal accidents, and then maybe Congress wouldn’t have so many objections. I can’t advocate for that, of course. I might be tickled pink to see it, but I can’t tell anyone to go out and do it. I won’t even suggest it! And remember: a presidential pardon only works on federal cases. States might prosecute anyone committing such heinous acts. On the other hand, if a President had a privileged conversation about the Constitution with a State Governor, well… that Governor might decide to do a favor for that unindictable President. God Bless America and God Bless our troops.

– at which point the Press Secretary calls for questions.

Trump stole money from cancer kids. I don’t understand how anyone can miss the slime dripping off him. Yeah, I’m partisan about this.

– and while he’s at it, maybe Biden could see that Alito and Thomas met with some unfortunate fatality… and if congress does not think he should be allowed to replace them, perhaps they, too, would suddenly find their numbers shrinking as the pile of bodies mounts (I’m looking at you, Mitch McConnell).

I agree! And I’m thankful that lots of games build that in.

I hate using AWSD as direction keys. I don’t understand why some games refuse to map the arrow keys to the same commands, but some don’t and it becomes up to me to manually set that right before playing anything.

It irritates me so much to me that if a game doesn’t let me change the key mappings, I’m probably going for a refund rather than play at all.

Recent big sites that closed down: Jezebel, Pitchfork, Vice, Popular Science, and my hopes for the Messenger were dashed when they announced their demise: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4440773-news-startup-the-messenger-shutting-down/

LA Times and the like are hit with layoffs and – worse – Sinclair heavyweight added the Balitmore Sun to the list of ‘compromised’ media outlets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/01/15/baltimore-sun-sold-david-smith-sinclair/

That said, there are always new sites, but gaining trust and reputation takes time.

Social sites seem doomed to crest and then fall. Digg? MySpace? Friendster? Who remembers the good old days of (moderated) UseNet? Do we want any of those back? Would any of them have remained were it not for spam/bad-actors?

I’m not the lego person, but I am not taking that selfie because: 1) I don’t want to clean the house to make it look all nice before judgey relatives critique the pic, 2) my phone is old and all its pics are kinda fish-eyed, 3) I don’t actually want to spend the time doing the task right now when AI can get me an image in seconds.

It might also be a red-bellied newt or a Sierra newt. Habitat ranges can be found here: https://critterhideout.com/newts-in-north-america/

More pics and distinguishing features of each (note that these pages only give their range for just the state of California, but the rough-skinned ranges far beyond):

• Rough-skinned: https://californiaherps.com/salamanders/pages/t.granulosa.html
• Red-bellied: https://californiaherps.com/salamanders/pages/t.rivularis.html
• Sierra: https://californiaherps.com/salamanders/pages/t.sierrae.html

Watch out for the sloppy reporting in the Salon piece. For example, it states:

“Hur’s claim that Biden couldn’t remember the day his son died was an outrageous lie,” argued Tommy Vietor, a former Obama staffer and commentator.

Vietor DID tweet that, but Salon doesn’t mention that Hur didn’t make that claim. Rather, Hur claimed Biden couldn’t remember the YEAR (not DAY).

“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” the report said. (source NBC).

I liked Tamara Keith’s more accurate coverage posted over here: https://www.wbur.org/npr/1237745840/biden-hur-report-memory-classified-documents

Crawford said that legislators had heard from NASA, which expressed concern about the bill’s impact on programs to develop alternative proteins for astronauts. An amendment to the bill will address that problem, Crawford said, allowing an exemption for research purposes.

Opponents of the ban have said governments shouldn’t interfere with a nascent industry because of unfounded fears over safety concerns.

The carve-out for NASA doesn’t make this bill any better. The bill is obviously stifling.

That said, I really do want some extra checks that whatever agar-like substrate meat is grown in does not leech excessive quantities of hormones (think: rBST) or other chemicals into the packaged product. I would happily eat lab-grown meat, but I want to know that it is well tested for safety.

I appreciate that the “Gradient Canopy” roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, so maybe the problem is they didn’t do enough by not adding in some shielding, too.

The warning message said the port was not open, but my guess is that the message was inexact. I doubt the port was ever restricted at all. In fact – and with no evidence one way or the other – it wouldn’t surprise me if the only issue was my old video card and the ‘port’ error was simply the first error message the game found on initial launch. For my theory to make sense, though, some initial setup piece must have completed on 1st launch such that the 2nd launch had a newly made config file or something and that extra piece let me proceed to a more accurate error.

Ooooh, I’d like that! Well, there’s 3 parts to the (random user input / scripted game output) conundrum:

1. I think it is fair that if you ask, ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ the NPC might either respond as if it is being accused of sabotage, answer the damn question, lie, or prefer not to talk about it (it’s personal).
2. I’d keep a short list of standard options – probably in a collapsed scroller kinda thing so you could either verbally say or type whatever you want, OR you could click an arrow to pick from a list. That way lazy or stuck players wou;dn’t have to think of all the options, and players interested in roleplaying could do as they please.
3. I’m OK with, “I’m not going to respond to that”. I’d hope each character had several variations of that, but I think it is legitimate for NPCs to dislike being pestered. Shopkeepers might have replies like, “Are you gonna buy something or are you just here to bend my ear?” or “I don’t see how that relates to my inventory.” Random townies might reply, “Do I even know you?” or “Would you PLEASE stop bothering me.” or “You’re harshing my mellow, man. Shhhh… Just chill.”

It is probably easier. I used to run a program that ran its own mini server-like process to send input to other open programs. It used local ports. It didn’t need internet, but it did need ports. My first guess is that programmers already know a bunch of dev libraries that deal with ports so it is easier to use that than write something else from scratch.

NOTE: I just downloaded the game and on my first attempted launch, it complained that the port it wanted was not open. My only option was to close the game. I ran netstat and did not see the port listed, so I tried again. THAT time, it complained about my older video card :-/ The warning is clunky and there’s a typo, too (within -> withing). It says (if I transcribed accurately):

You are using an: NVIDIA GEOFORCE GTX 1080. This video card is currently not recognized withing the recommended specs. We only support a limited amount of NVIDIA GTX graphics cards, all NVIDIA RTX graphics cards or all AMD RX graphics cards since the local AI requires a lot of performance.

So please note that the game might not work properly. Refer to the Steam guide for more information.

When I closed that warning, the game loaded.

NOTE: I just downloaded the game and on my first attempted launch, it complained that the port it wanted was not open. My only option was to close the game. I ran netstat and did not see the port listed, so I tried again. THAT time, it complained about my older video card :-/ The warning is clunky and there’s a typo, too (within -> withing). It says (if I transcribed accurately):

You are using an: NVIDIA GEOFORCE GTX 1080. This video card is currently not recognized withing the recommended specs. We only support a limited amount of NVIDIA GTX graphics cards, all NVIDIA RTX graphics cards or all AMD RX graphics cards since the local AI requires a lot of performance.

So please note that the game might not work properly. Refer to the Steam guide for more information.

When I closed that warning, the game loaded.

In addition to the delay, the court asked for arguments to an over-broad question:

“Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

Note that they COULD have asked something more like, “Were Donald Trump’s actions on and surrounding the January 6th incidents official acts of a President and is Trump therefore immune from criminal prosecution because the conduct was both within his tenure in office and within the scope of his duties?” Of course, that is not what was asked. The actual question asks for long and careful considered speculation on all possible contingencies where the relevant case is about a specific set of actions that could be quickly assessed.

see also: https://www.salon.com/2024/02/28/the-is-indulging-immunity-claim-further-delaying-his-trial/

This Op/Ed expresses my sentiment better than I’d do: https://crooksandliars.com/2024/02/mitch-mcconnell-steps-down-senate

As gun control advocate Shannon Watts writes, “Sen. Mitch McConnell’s legacy will be that he purposefully undermined America’s first Black president, he broke the Supreme Court, he helped elect a fascist President, and he abetted up an insurrection on American soil.”

(and)

Let’s not pretend his successor will be any better. He is likely to be a Trump toady who will bow before the pressure and screw this country even more.

Msnbc’s Alex Wagner pointed out on her show that, “After all, it took just 51 days from the time Trump was kicked off the ballot in Colorado on December 19th to when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for that case – the 14th Amendment case – on February 8th. Now on December 11th, 2023, Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to quickly weigh in on Trump’s immunity appeal and to do so early , which the Court rejected! And now by the time we get to April 22nd, which is when the Court plans to hear arguments in this immunity case, it will have been 133 days since the Court was first asked to hear the appeal. So the pace is… curious? Around 50 days when it helps Donald Trump, and over 130 days when it doesn’t.”