Also, the pet store crickets are pathetic, tiny and malnourished. Love some advice on best practices!

If anyone has springtails to spare, I’ll gladly pay for them, shipped to NW Florida. Been wanting to get back into breeding those.

Colourful reply!

Here’s your answer on Trump.

How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

Still as true in 2025 as it was in 2016. If you truly want to understand, read it. I read it a couple of times a year to retain my sanity, get some understanding of the seeming anarchy.

I drive all through AL, but never make it that far north.

Reminds me, there’s a public trail just outside the tiny Navy base down the road. Need to go check on the beaver dams.

“I’ll give you a buffalo nickel if you’ll calm down just a little bit.”

The vast majority of people don’t have a creative bone in their body. Most people are some variation of stupid. Intelligence and creativity usually go hand in hand.

Perhaps you disagree? Consider, just being here, in this space, having this conversation, puts you well above most people in intelligence. And your friends and coworkers likely reflect that intelligence. Still don’t believe me? Sign into Facebook with a new account, look around. And those are the people who can and do use technology.

I’m barely above average, 119 IQ, but I’ve got down in the trenches, at work and in interpersonal relationships. Yeah. Most people are dumber than me, and that’s scary. Odds are, you’re smarter than me.

And no, even among the smarter set, most people can’t make an image without a website to do it for them. I worked at a shop that was part graphic design. It’s appalling how clueless people are at creating the simplest thing. And I am no artist.

One note I never hear sung is AI’s ability to jump-start creative works. EDIT: Proof at the end!

For example, I wrote a horror short that was stuck in my head. What if I had used AI to write it for me? I certainly would not have used the output verbatim, not even close, but it might have presented me some twists, vocabulary, structure, etc., that I had not thought of.

Same goes for code. I had an idea to automate Google Calendar entries with certain events at work. Couldn’t quite get it right, had ChatGPT write it. Did it work? Of course not, but I found the pieces I needed to put it together.

Maybe you just need the right words. “explain to my wife what depression is like” That worked well!

I’m extremely creative, but not in the typical artistic ways. What I’m good at is taking junk and upcycling it into useful end products. I could input garbage items I found, see what an image generator or chat does with it. Well, let me put my money where my mouth is.

(Pulled this idea out my butt just now, no planning, testing prompts, totally ad lib, input and output quoted as-is.)

Towed a large, sealed, flat, thick, plastic container out of the river last month. (Fuck me, about sank the canoe untangling it from the dead fall!) ChatGPT: “what can I make with a large, plastic gas tank?”

1. Water Storage Tank

Repurpose the gas tank to store water, especially for outdoor activities like camping, gardening, or as an emergency backup. You can install a spigot at the bottom to make it easy to dispense water.

LOL, that was the idea! Going to hang it in a tree at camp, pump creek water into it with tiny chlorine tabs, make another shower. Or maybe use it for the bathroom I need to make? Hmmm…

2. Compost Bin

With some modifications like drilling holes for ventilation, a plastic gas tank can be transformed into a compost bin. The tank’s large size provides ample room for organic waste.

Great idea, but I’ve got all the space for compost I need. Although… Put it on a frame so it can be spun?

3. Outdoor Planter

If the gas tank has a sturdy base, it can be converted into a large planter. Cut the tank to create drainage holes, fill it with soil, and plant flowers, vegetables, or herbs.

Holy shit! I’ve been plotting on making floating, yoga-pad mats so I can grow in the creek without animals screwing it up. I have circular saw blades, can fit pots I already have or scrounge for free. I can make my own soil from local organic muck and sand. Let’s see, play around with the buoyancy. Guess what I’m doing tomorrow. Hot DAMN am I stoked!

tl;dr: AI will add to our creative endeavors, not replace them.

Neither is true.

Hopped my last two jobs because I had a little shit fit, no real reason to leave. Damned near tripled my salary and benefits.

Wish more young people understood this.

“bUT CaPitaListIsm!”

It’s a two-way street my friends. That evil employer paid you to gain experience and stack your resume. Wake the fuck up. Your labor is worth more than your take home pay. Take the money and run.

When my buddies and I moved to Florida, my guy went from a managerial position at a cable contractor to changing oil at Jiffy Lube. Every 6-months or so he’d hop up. In a few years he was making 6-digits.

“Captain! Captain! They’re fucking me!”

Spot on! Especially the “shameless” bit. Yeah, the rich were rich, but Jesus, it was distasteful and immoral to flaunt it.

Spotify was the only service I had. Lost my job, cut back. Thought I’d be fine with some ads. Not like THAT I wasn’t.

Thankfully I downloaded all my music first. Been too lazy to find a FOSS alternative to play it all.

I have Prime (for delivery savings) and still steal the shit they play. If I like it, I keep it. If not, I delete it. Backed up onsite and offsite. Fuck 'em. $100/yr. to Google gets me plenty of storage.

LOL, nothing new to me. I’m in an amazing, high-tech version of 1999. Fuck it. I’m stealing it. Again.

Setup a Digital Ocean droplet in Amsterdam, years ago. LOL, not even sure how to login to it, because I don’t have to touch it.

OpenVPN -> connect -> thepiratebay.org -> Tixati -> done

Yeah, I could be more secure, do it better, good enough for me to steal movies and books.

Force here is more browbeating the shit out of the patient. Doctors and nurses can get pretty damned insistent when you want to leave.

I keep a close eye on water levels and patterns. Seen it dry up quite a bit around here the last 5 years. Dry, in NW Florida, in a swamp. It’s worse than you see with your eyes.

Didn’t have many dragonflies this year at camp. They stay underwater for 2 full years until they mature and fly around for a month. Where did they go? Several “ponds” dried up to mud puddles the last 2 years, never seen it that bad.

With my velociraptor air force diminished, had more mosquitoes this year. Dried up ponds also killed the tiny fish. Go figure.

Y’all are thinking about human and crop water supplies. There is so much more to it than that.

Kung Pow - Enter the Fist

Give it a shot!

“High school kids don’t act like that.”

Well, they acted exactly like that in my day.

The Breakfast Club. I always find it weird when people say it’s not realistic. That’s how teens were back then!

That may be true, but lye and bleach are still slippery with gloves on.

I’ve stuck my hand in sulfuric acid and lye. No problem. You will instantly locate each and every microscopic cut on your hand. Sulfuric reacts with water to dilute instantly. Lye OTOH, yeah, takes a minute to get that off. But you will never see your hands so perfectly clean!

And if y’all mess with either, wear some damned goggles. A glass of water to the eye will quickly fix sulfuric, but you’re screwed if you splash lye in there.