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  • Location: USA, Midwest and the Internet

    So, We all gotta be more careful about our online bullshit going forward. Personally, I like to stir shit along with promoting myself professionally as an author. Due to that, Reddit used to be a helpful resource. Over the past two weeks since posting on the last collapse board there, I've gotten triple-banned when I've never been bothered prior. The latest cause was joking about the Iran nuclear situation by saying I hope a war breaks out so we can begin ignoring Washington. All this to say that the internet is rapidly becoming less the place to try stirring shit directly.

    As for the midwest, times are getting rough; people are defaulting on cars, rents, and cards out this way and the state's services seem to be taking the same attitude, leaving trees fallen from windstorms for weeks or months, and sinkholes and potholes to the same fate. Additionally, the illegal reforms to the citizenship process have thrown my area into a good deal of chaos. Many of the local meat-workers in our region currently come from American Samoa and the Caribbean, among other Latin-settled areas much to the chagrin of both the federal administration and some of the locals (the locals are just angry they no longer have the work they need). Additionally, everyone is desperate for work, this week alone I've been approached with more requests for under-the-table work than I've ever received in this city. Lots more gunshots and sirens than usual as well, though I haven't checked the crime map, so I couldn't rightly say how much is self-defense and how much is the usual community stand-offs, business gotta business after all.

    For me though, I've been setting up immigration plans with my sister and working on a garden and chicken coop for my elderly parents who do not want to leave the nation they were born in and grew up in. Unfortunately, as a writer, one can find damn near anything to distract one's self from what I should be doing, editing, and the issue with a fascist uprising? Lots of great material for a fiction author who focuses on anti-fascism in fiction. Anyway, hang loose y'all and if you were talking to a "greycomedy" on reddit, my bad, I got myself banned.

  • I've started harvesting from my garden (started from scratch ~2 years ago) and I've gotten some nice specimens, but yields were low. Some plants didn't make it to harvest, some didn't mature enough, and some didn't fruit. My soil started with almost no nutrition and I'm doing this on a - quite frankly - very cheap budget; I haven't done another soil test but it's pretty clear I need to further improve the soil. I'll run another test, grab some fertilizers and spread them out hopefully later this year.

    I'm looking to adapt the soil to the plants but also the plants to the soil to some extent, so I've been keeping an eye out on what grows without much soil improvement. There's definitely a few. More did well with the vegetative stage than the flowering stage (due presumably to a lack of phosphorous).

    The things I'm growing in pots are generally doing pretty well, but they require a lot of watering (the whole garden does - without a reservoir system, if running water goes out people's gardens will soon follow).

    I tend to give things a little more shade these days than I would have when I was younger. Maybe I'm being counter-productive but it seems like I see more sunburn and drying out here/now. At some point I should take measurements but I don't have time right now.

    The weather was harsh at times for the spring/summer seasons. I have above average windbreaks and eliminated standing water so I didn't lose too many plants.

    I've had a lot of opportunist "weeds" crop up in areas of disturbed soil. They do very well at all stages haha. I let some grow for awhile to let them improve the soil in various ways, and then pulled anything non-native.

    I've had lots of baby trees popping up, too. I keep mowing to a minimum. I let some stay, move others, and generally avoid getting rid of them as much as I can. But there's a lot. I might have to start a business selling them lol. Anyway, there are reasons that people turn to famine foods in famine - because they're the only thing that grows. A pretty simple concept, but probably not something we usually think about while mowing.

    I'm not looking forward to moving pots in/out with the seasons changing. I also have propagations to tend to, and need to prepare more.

    Not a bad season overall. I have some seed lineages I'm excited to continue. Modern conveniences make all of this possible, at least without other infrastructure prepped. Certain weather instabilities have definitely been a hassle although nothing was too extreme so far this year. Let's see long how that lasts.

  • Location: US Intermountain West, solid MAGA territory

    Went for a walk the other day. Wife and I might have been the only people actually looking up and around instead of straight down at a phone. I'm surprised I don't see pedestrians physically colliding more often. Passing motorists also, more often than not, were looking straight down at their laps instead of at the road. The roads were congested with cars sitting directly in front of "NO PARKING" signs, occupied with drivers and passengers staring at their phones. Walkways are littered with dog shit and empty beer containers.

    It's like the second half of Wall-E, minus the floating Rascals and cleaning robots.

    All the Trump flags have gone down since the election, but not because of shame. I think they just don't feel the need to get vocal anymore. They're comfortable now, having thoroughly owned the libs, and knowing that 85% of this place voted for the New Gilded Age.

    Our desert aquifers continue to empty. Most houses have lush, water-logged, even mushroomed bluegrass lawns. Domed up, to roll off excess water pumped up from the ground, fertilizer and all, into the storm drains and down river. We don't even have meters. It's all free.

    Federal dollars fund the largest employer in the region--bigger than the second largest by a factor of five. Trump could send this whole region into anarchy overnight with a stroke of his pen, or more likely, DOGE pulling the wrong Jenga block.

    Looking forward to seeing the spring and summer flowers, not just in my yard, but around town. I'm pretty sure I and the local birds are single-handedly re-seeding the town with native flowers that were wiped out.

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