Tootfinder

I have my share of issues with Parkrose Permaculture, but she has a lot of things I do strongly agree with. I can't stress enough that you never dehumanize your enemies. You can respond appropriately to violence. You can defend yourself from them by any means necessary. But you do not dehumanize them. You always limit your response to the minimum necessary to defend yourself.
There are a number of former Nazi skins who became antifascists after realizing they were wrong. Those folks tend to be some of the most dedicated because they feel a debt, and some of the most knowledgeable because they were there. Coming out of these types of cults, police included, is hard and takes time. A lot of us don't have the ability to work with them. But some do.
By repeatedly humanizing your opponent, you can break some of them. The #Seattle Police Department was not defunded but saw a massive reduction in numbers because their morale was destroyed. Some people will never change. Some people are broken and feel like they need the power. But if you change one person's mind, even give them something to think about, it's a crack. If even one cop quits, that's one less trained gun pointed at you in the future.
The 18 year old marines and federalized national guard troops out there are literally kids. A lot of them came from poor communities. They are being used in a way they haven't been trained to do, doing things they (should) have been told are not legal. They joined to get out of poverty, to go to college, or to "defend the American people" (regardless of how misguided that is). Few, if any, of them joined to abuse people. They will be especially open to persuasion.
Remind those troops that they are carrying out illegal orders, that they are being called on to violate their oath to protect the constitution, that they are suppressing the free speech of the fellow Americans they swore to defend. Remind them that the people they could be illegally arresting now are just like their parents, their neighbors, their families, the friends who didn't join. Remind them that this is the first step. They will be called on to kill Americans if they let this keep going.
Remind them ICE sleeps in hotels while they sleep on the ground. Remind them that their drunk and incompetent leadership thinks of them as disposable tools. Remind them that some of these people are out protesting *for them* against cuts to the VA and other services. Remind them that the people they're defending refuse to make college free so they can recruit from poor schools. Remind them that they will always be welcome when they're ready to join the side of freedom and justice.
When you dehumanize your enemies, you unify them. When you humanize your enemies, you can divide them. There is no weapon available to us right now so powerful as compassion.
https://youtu.be/YtWOYUDMsBw

Over the past twenty-one years, I've posted 365 posts to my blog, on average one every twenty-one days. They total almost half a million words.
That's quite some corpus of work.
#Blog
#Blogging

365 posts
Checking my blog yesterday, I noticed that I had published 365 posts, one for every day of the year. Which, considering that the oldest post that remains is from the 24th June 2004, almost twenty one years ago, means that I've averaged one post every twenty-one days over that period. Mind you, I've not been consistent; there've been periods I've posted more, others I've posted less.

"What comes next? Perhaps it shouldn’t be so hard to imagine, given the drift of what’s now called geoeconomics. Already, China commands global trade, and modeling from Bloomberg shows that, as constituted today, the tariffs will only add to the lead — pushing many more countries to work more with China and less with America. According to one model, 30 percent of American trading partners would fully recover from even total cessation of U.S. trade within one year; within five years, more than half would. "
#GiftArticle #China #USPolitics
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/opinion/china-trade-economy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AE8.hIwJ.AfGyLW35RqaM&smid=url-share

The Klamath has long been my favorite river in California (and a bit of Oregon.)
A week ago I was at the mouth of the Klamath in Redwood National Park/Prairie Creek State park.
I'm glad the Coho salmon are returning to the Klamath so quickly (of all the varieties of salmon, Coho is my favorite. The creek behind my house once supported Coho, but they are essentially gone, although there are occasional reports.)

I know that anything with aquarium on it costs more, but the aquarium tax for snowflake food is ridiculous. I've been keeping shrimp for less than a year, so maybe other shrimp keepers already know about this cheap alternative to snowflake food, but in case you didn't -
After watching some YT shrimp keeper channels, I've been feeding my neocaridina colony snowflake food a couple of times a week. They like it and I was almost out, so I was looking at the bag and realized it only has one ingredient - soy hulls. I paid $12 for 3 1/2 ounces of snowflake food.
I thought there must be a cheaper source, so I looked online and found soy hull pellets for mushroom cultivation were 10 pounds for $20. The pellets are exactly the same size as the ones in the snowflake food bag, and my colony eats them just as eagerly.
Snowflake food: $3.70 an ounce.
Bulk organic soybean husks: $0.13 an ounce. 28x cheaper.
@… @… @… #aquarium #nanotank #shrimptank #neocaridina

Edinburgh's low emission zone seems to be working.
https://road.cc/content/news/ediburghs-lez-results-more-cycling-and-less-car-use-314269

Edinburgh sees “statistically significant” shift towards cycling and walking plus reduced car use following introduction of low emission zone, finds study
Within a year, the LEZ has contributed in improving air quality, with the number of non-compliant vehicles entering the zone also decreasing significantly

Just found out that an old intranet we initially created for a customer back in 2008-9 (on Drupal 4.7 or maybe 5, subsequently upgraded through to Drupal 6) is still running (not on the open internet). Their MS Sharepoint replacement for it has been... less than stunningly successful in its designated role.
I suspect that original Intranet, even inflation adjusted, would've cost the orders of magnitude less in up-front development and per-year maintenance.

To paraphrase Barry Scwartz: The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less
With the continuous glitz of KDE, Hyprland, dwm, Slackware and Gentoo as daily drivers it's the time of year to start winding down.
Also because I've been revisiting Steve Anelay's videos (OldTechBloke, sorely missed) I'll spend a month on the Mate desktop, starting this Saturday.
But what to run it on? Help me make a choice, appreciated 😎

'Given that the average electric drill is in use for just 15 minutes each year, and is kept in storage for the rest of the time, it’s clear that many household items don’t really need to be owned at all' - @alexjgnana https://www.overcomecompulsivehoarding.co.

5 Million less tourists a year visit Fisherman's Wharf since pandemic, The Port Of #SanFrancisco has found Oakland's Everett & Jones BBQ willing to take over Lou's at Pier 47, but can't find replacement for Alioto's iconic 3 story restaurant, and announce plan to tear it down and turn it into pedestrian plaza.

"Solar panels' shade helps boost Colorado grassland productivity in dry years"
#US #USA #America #Colorado

Solar panels' shade helps boost Colorado grassland productivity in dry years
Grasses growing in the shade of a solar array were only a little less productive than those growing nearby in open grassland during years of average and above-average rainfall—but in a dry year, the shaded plants grew much better than those growing in full sun. That's the result of a four-year study we conducted in a semi-arid grassland of northern Colorado.