Turns out that actively building and fostering a political economy that doesn't cater to parasitic finance, insurance and real estate rent seeking was the true subsidy all along
Thank you, they are cute even though I hate how they devour uncaged plants. In the fall I like feeding them windfall apples that have gone weird.
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/the-iran-war-plan
Ken on the escalation towards open war with Iran and differences between Biden and trump. I'm not sure I believe that the recent US strikes against ansarallah were as successful as stated here (hitting leadership)
This is a pretty important development. The cost of interceptors is less important than their availability. Good catch.
Yes I'm very grateful and lucky to have this opportunity. Without details, I hope to spend the rest of my life here so I'm happy to be patient and plant tiny trees.
Differences - yes. So far the biggest one is the amount of bugs, especially in the warmer months. I look out and I see clouds of flying insects and when there isn't traffic noise you hear a thrum of bees and other buzzing insects. I have also started seeing more birds around the yard as shrubs have gotten taller. When it was just grass, there wasn't much for little birds to hide in, but now they are much more likely to hang out because there are shrubby branches and stuff to mess around in and also there's more insects for food. I even saw a falcon land out on the raspberry frame once, and another time a type of local hawk. Racoons dig around in the yard more than they used to but that's OK, the fact that they're finding things to eat indicates that there's healthy soil life for them to dig up. There's tons of deer in the area and they've always gone through the yard, but last year in the summer a mom left her two babies in a patch I've been rewilding that was just grass 3-4 years ago. Deer moms only leave their babies in places they think are safe, so I took that as a good sign.
Things I haven't seen in the yard proper yet include snakes (I tried building a hibernacula but either it's not suitable or no snakes have found it yet), or aquatic critters (there is a little pond here that I didn't build but it is full of invasive goldfish that would eat any frog/newt eggs)
Most of the shrubs and native trees I've planted are only a foot high or so. With any luck, the place will look very different in a decade.
@[email protected] here are a couple pics of the fawns:
who cares if you have some 'friction' with your teacher? grad school is all about learning and you can learn from anyone. sounds like you'll be learning with someone who's pretty good if not great, certainly better than some lanyard wearing polisci nerd who wants to create another think tankie. one of the things you'll be able to learn from this person is how to deal with the limits of trots. if you're going to grad school for marxism you're going to encounter a hell of a lot more conflict than just this in your life.
yes agreed. creating a space where there's a diversity of life is so nice. for the past 5 years or so I have been working to rewild/garden a yard full of grass. while it's still early days in the grand scheme, it's wonderful to see the diversity and intensity of life even when the area is still young
once I just said "fuck it, let's just see what happens" it became so satisfying to just see how things progressed
yep 100%. the gardener is the coach of the garden, not the boss. if you try a bunch of stuff you'll find out what works better or worse. trying stuff in real life and watching what happens is the best way to learn and it's more productive than trying to min max things.
Thank you for sharing your analysis comrade. Way to be 4 months ahead of the curve.
I missed this until now but there was a major tailings dam failure at a mine in Zambia last month. This is a really poor one, it sounds like there was a lot of acidic, heavy metal laden waste that went into the downstream environment.
archive - https://archive.is/Te73M
The spill happened on Feb. 18 when a tailings dam that holds acidic waste from a copper mine in the north of the country collapsed, according to investigators from the Engineering Institution of Zambia.
The collapse allowed some 50 million liters of waste containing concentrated acid, dissolved solids and heavy metals to flow into a stream that links to the Kafue River, Zambia’s most important waterway, the engineering institution said.
Here is a more technical discussion with before and after pics: https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/chambishi-tsf-1
I don't know the history of sino metals and this particular mine, like whether the mine existed and was bought by them or if sino metals designed it and started it themselves, but in any case this was absolutely the fault of the engineers and staff running the facility. Safe water storage is a critical aspect of dam operation and by running the system without it, this failure was way worse than it could have been. Regardless of who pays the price in dollars, it's the people, animals and environment of the kafue river that pays the real price.
the headline of this article is accurate - copper is a bigger bottleneck for electrification than rare earths: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/16/nx-s1-5327095/copper-rare-earth-minerals-mining-electronics
Writing off veganism as "White" is just a way for carnists to attack the messenger instead of critically engaging with the moral and ethical positions espoused by vegans. Said positions are clearly and obviously correct, a fact which gives carnists tummy aches, so it makes sense that carnists want to shift the terrain of debate