SolarMonkey

joined 4 months ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] SolarMonkey 3 points 1 month ago

Probably a lot of it is the long term maintenance involved with trees. Both at a personal and municipal level.

We recently had a tornado touch down in a place that doesn’t normally get them, and we lost a lot of really big old trees, some planted long before the roads were paved the first time, and that did a ton of damage to the infrastructure, as well as just sucking in general for all the damage they did to houses. And insurance companies were.. not super great.

Additionally, there is a need to do regular maintenance to keep clear power lines and such, clean up leaves, trim branches, whatever else, making it less attractive financially/time wise, even though it would increase wellbeing all around.

I don’t see that as a particularly valid reason, personally.. there’s a park, about an acre and a half, in the middle of the boring part of my town that was put in a few years back as a veteran memorial because the land is otherwise pretty worthless (with the stupid way we have set society up - it’s actually incredibly valuable real-estate for microshops in a human-centric design). Nobody ever goes to it, because there’s no shade, despite the lovely expensive granite benches, and its central location. The town doesn’t want to pay to maintain more trees, because we already have a lot of them in other, bigger (thus more localized) parks. If they put 2-5 strategically-selected-and-placed trees in now, along with a water retention soil amendment to avoid watering, it would be a nice little local green space park people would walk to in as little as a decade, but they haven’t planted anything but non-native bulb-type flowers that even our pollinators don’t like, so nobody will ever use it. I wouldn’t mind paying more in tax to responsibly green up the area, but they don’t even want to bother trying.

Same with towns/neighborhoods with no trees, they tend to kinda suck to be in. I can’t imagine not having trees in my yard, or immediately around my place if I was renting (I used to rent a place with like 6 big shade trees around the buildings, that was nice). I’d plant some if they weren’t already there, tho I’m adding 4 more to my tiny lot as soon as the easement is nullified! Free food trees (apple, plum, and pear) yeah! But my big tree will -absolutely- wipe out my house if it comes down in a storm, it’s a 150yo oak about 10 feet from the side of my house. The absolute best case scenario if it comes down.. is it splits in half and only takes out the front room and living room (empty rooms at night). I’m leaving it, despite having damage because of it that tornado, but I understand my neighbors taking theirs down when they lost a big branch and had to deal with home damage. And I get not planting new ones after that, tho I disagree with it.

[–] SolarMonkey 22 points 1 month ago

My Russian professor one year had an after-semester dinner party at her own house, complete with some of her family and friends showing up to play traditional music and teach us about the foods they made and stuff. There was indeed dancing and instruction of such, as well. And yes, everyone clapped, because that’s a traditional way to keep beat with music, especially music meant for movement.

It was a really small class, but all the same, that sort of thing does happen, especially with language teachers in my experience, because they also want to teach culture. Those were most of my coolest (other than my very wacky physics prof).

[–] SolarMonkey 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That would be insidious.

[–] SolarMonkey 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Apparently you don’t understand how people emulate others.

I don’t think I can help you if you honestly seriously believe the culture and shit from 30 years ago has nothing to do with today.

I’m not talking about Manson, I love Manson. I’m not talking about doom, I grew up playing doom and have literally every edition of it including vr. I don’t watch the news, I find sources I trust like a responsible adult. Don’t change the subject.

I’m talking about people making threats against their fellow students. That’s not a media phenomenon, it’s a whole snowballing of events, and all the little bullshit edgelord threats for funsies contribute to it.

[–] SolarMonkey 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

Ok but you do realize that it’s largely because of people like you who did it to be edgy and shit that it’s such a big problem now..? Like you get that, right?

Like sure some places overreact a bit, but that’s not really… justification? And it doesn’t absolve you of contributing to the problem we have now by making people scared by being a weirdo edgelord copycat for funsies.

[–] SolarMonkey 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

My town (sort of- it’s a bunch or merged towns) finally got its actual grocery store back! That sort of thing is such a big deal to micromobility and public transit.

It closed down like a decade ago and we’ve had this discount merchant that nobody goes to because it’s real junk ripe with dollar store shrinkfkation issues, and if you can afford to go elsewhere, you do, and a few overpriced small town grocers that charge 2-5x what a regular grocer does.

The closest real grocery was 25 minutes by car on the highway going 70 for most of the trip. The re-opened grocery is 21 minutes by human-powered bike, assuming fitness (no, but working on it).

So now that that’s an option again, I have an actual excuse to get a cheap e-bike for shopping for fresh produce (that’s what’s most pricy at the small town gougers). I already have a nice detachable basket for shopping, so it’s the perfect out-of-house regular activity. Maybe weekly instead of monthly grocery trips. I’ll eat better, and for less overall.

Especially since I just paid 3k to fix the transmission on my car (😭😭😭). Sadly I’m rural enough I need the car, but if I don’t have to use it, I win.

[–] SolarMonkey 35 points 1 month ago (9 children)

Cool story bro. Probably one you don’t want to broadcast to the world cuz it’s a pretty fucked up thing to do.

[–] SolarMonkey 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

What if they resurrect you for your followers or whatever based on your prior activity, so nobody even notices you are gone? It’s all ai now anyway.

Bleak af, but entirely possible now. There’s that platform that should be called echochamberAI but instead is called socialAI, and mimics a whole social network for… whatever reason.

[–] SolarMonkey 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It updates in real time with edits and additions, same with comment replies and stuff that come in while you are looking at a thread.

I don’t think most people know about that feature of Lemmy and the mobile clients (honestly dunno about web clients), but when you are chronically online you see things update in real time quite a bit. It’s super cool :)

[–] SolarMonkey 3 points 1 month ago

Yeah, this being gas powered totally ruined it for me.

I was kinda expecting him to look at the fuel pump and be like this doesn’t fit and then plug it into a random household extension cord type thing to charge..

[–] SolarMonkey 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

An actual true fact is that some people have nerves that travel from their belly button to their groin so if you go digging around in the scarred back part of your belly button you may have an interesting sensational surprise.

I’m one such person. It’s not actually a fun sensation, sort of overwhelming/vaguely painful, uncomfortable intensity. But it goes directly into my ladybits, and several people I used to know have reported the same.

[–] SolarMonkey 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wow that was disappointing. 75 days and 5k.

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