Sitting under a pohutakawa, sipping coffee, and waiting on a friend who wants to give me pastries. So far so good.
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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So jealous! Hope the sun is warm and the breeze is refreshing whereever you may be right now :)
Sounds idyllic!
Just managed to prop up the swan plants that the storm knocked over. Hope it works!
You reminded me, I got some swan plants and they went in the ground a couple of days ago. Now we wait!
Also planted some tomatoes, a cucumber, and a capsicum.
Excellent! I thank you on behalf of butterflies. Monarchs are actually endangered these days so you're doing them a solid.
Capsicums are a great idea, they cost so much these days to buy at the supermarket. When I was a kid we could buy them by the crateload in summer.
Monarchs are actually endangered these days so you’re doing them a solid.
Unfortunately only the migratory subspecies common in North America is endangered. I think we just have the plain old ones here that aren't endangered, so I'm not helping an endangered species. But I'm still helping the individual butterflies that visit to fulfil their hopes and dreams.
Capsicums are a great idea, they cost so much these days to buy at the supermarket. When I was a kid we could buy them by the crateload in summer.
You can get them reasonably cheap when in season, usually less that $2 for a big one but only for a short time.
The trouble with trying to save money by growing your own veggies is they are always cheap in the stores when your own are ready. But no matter, having some colour in the garden is nice. Plus it's good showing the kids where food comes from.
That's so good to know our butterflies are not endangered after all. Some of the ones here are born deformed (I give them a couple of nice days being hand fed and then euthanise them - the humane way is to put them in a container in the fridge for a while and then the freezer btw). So I was a bit worried.
It's been a few years since capsicum here has come down to a price point I can really justify buying them except as a special treat, but my partner was able to grow some in pots from seeds of an old one last year!
I think kids learn a lot from gardening. How veges are "made", cause and effect, patience, and the role of luck and the weather...
Growing from seed is amazing! My mum has a capsicum plant (capsicum-like? it grows those little ones) that survived from last year and is fruiting. I couldn't believe it, at our place the frosts smash them.
Kids definitely enjoy it, and learning where food comes from is great. Plus you can teach them not to waste food because it took all that effort to grow, so we need to plan our meals and only make what we will eat, etc.
Sometimes when growing veggies I wonder how the commercial growers ever manage to get them so consistent (I try not to think too hard tough because the answer is probably some spray cocktail).
This might be a dumb question, but does standing water in a room increase humidity as it evaporates?
Yes, the water goes into the air so the amount of water in the air increases.
Of course this is affected by how much water (a small amount may not make a measurable difference) and by the airflow (if air is cycling from outside then extra water will get disappated in that air).
Thanks, i keep second guessing myself if it will work
The amount it increases will be dominated by the humidity of the outside air unless the room is reasonably sealed.
There is an osmodic pressure that will normalize the different humidities; the speed at which the normalization will occur is determined by the airflow and permeability of the barrier.
e.g. the bathroom will steam up because of the shower quite quickly, but opening the window will allow the steam to flow out; with an open window and no wind the bathroom will still exhaust the steam.
Funny enough it is the bathroom where I'm trying to increase humidity.
There's no window but there is a skylight which isn't perfectly sealed. I'm trying leaving some water in the bathtub.
It kind of depends.
First time I went overseas I got a really sore dry nose and the tip of hanging a wet facecloth right next to my pillow worked.
You could maybe help it along by boiling it to release steam?
Thanks. I wanted a lazy no power way to do it. Don't want to run a humidifier or anything. Just increase relative humidity to keep some mushrooms growing
In that case I would go with a tub of scrunched up wet towels sitting in a few inches of water.
I'm no physicist but theoretically I imagine that gives more surface area for the water to evaporate from, and the towels should wick more moisture from the tub.
Hmm not a bad idea!
If you're trying to increase humidity, in theory it works but in practice I'm not sure how much water is needed to make a measurable difference, and if the rate of evaporation would be enough to make a decent difference. I guess you'd want a lot of surface area, so wide flat trays of water.
You could probably seach up tips online.
I got one of those mushroom kits, but my first flush stalled out due to I believe not enough humidity.
I'm trying 1/5 a bathtub full. With them growing above it
Is the bathroom used? I mean for showers/baths where there would be steam. I wonder if you aren't using it, it might not be very humid at all. If you are using it, I'd think that would be more than enough.
I think I remember you using Home Assistant, do you have a humidity sensor?
Also warmer air holds more water, so cold areas may not hold much water even if the relative humidity is high. I seem to remember hot water cupboards being a good place to grow mushrooms for this reason.
Don’t have anything for humidity at the moment sadly.
It’s a combined shower, bath and toilet. So a fairly big room and only 1 kid showers in there once a day. It’s got a single skylight that probably lets some air through. We just use our ensuite.
Main problem is Oyster mushrooms require air flow for oxygen and reading level light, but not direct sunlight. So I can’t keep it in a dark enclosed space with no airflow, which would keep humidity up.
I would guess that one shower a day adds more to the humidity than a bath of cold water sitting there all day, but that's just a guess. However, it may help make the humidity more consistent.
I would be pretty sure it won't make it less humid, so give it a go and see if it helps.
The problem is I had it there while there was one shower a day and that's where it stalled. So fingers crossed the bath helps!
Good luck!
Thought for the day
What is your relationship with advertising?
I personally go out of my way to block all of the online advertising and generally ignore offline ads. I find it invasive and predatory. But every now and then I see an ad for something cool, but it no longer makes me want the thing. I think advertising is designed to ingrain the motivation to consume without thought.
.Offline advertising doesn't really bother me because I hardly ever see it, and when I do most of it is not aimed at me so I tend to tune it out.
I block internet advertising as much as I can because, like you say, it is invasive and predatory. Google adsense once followed me all over the internet offering cures for an incurable disease and it's the worst feeling because you know it's a lie but there's that desperate side of you that wants it to be true so badly. After that I became a lot more serious about blocking trackers.
Our house is almost ad free. I have pihole set up to block most third party ads and trackers for anyone on our wifi (which blocks ads in mobile apps), have uBlock origin on our browsers, and I use firefox (actually fennec) on android with ublock origin installed.
I used to think billboards were my main source of ads but now I work from home most of the time so don't see as many.
We are a pretty low-TV household compared to others, so even product placement is hard to get us with. Probably the most effective advertising for me is companies paying supermarkets to get their product at my eye level on the shelves.
It makes Christmas difficult. My kids have no idea what they want because they don't have anything telling them what they should want. They mostly just ask for more of what they already have.
I also run PiHole at the network level, uBlock origin and Firefox. But I also have privacy badger ("learning" privacy blocker from the EFF) and trocker (for email trackers).
We don't have a TV so the kids don't see many ads at all, they ask for book and things they have already. Occasionally there will be discussions about what other kids are playing with at school.
As for supermarkets, I get given a list and I shop to the list (if I am the one shopping), no exceptions. It really shortcuts the impulse to buy the eye level stuff. I ask myself "is it on the list? No, then it doesn't go in the basket"
I used to run privacy badger, but there are issues with making you more easily fingerprintable covered in detail here, so learning is off by default and it's using static lists just like uBlock origin.
As I understand it, the general consensus is not to use Privacy Badger if you are also using an ad blocker like uBlock origin (see here).
As for supermarkets, I get given a list and I shop to the list (if I am the one shopping), no exceptions. It really shortcuts the impulse to buy the eye level stuff. I ask myself “is it on the list? No, then it doesn’t go in the basket”
When I'm looking for "something for tea" or "something for the kids lunches", sometimes browsing shelves is easier.
I like coming to Lemmy and seeing nothing blocked by uBlock Origin.....go to Gmail >1k, Google calendar 503; ChatGPT 13
I've almost completely moved away from google. But ofen those huge numbers are from retries. It got blocked so it tries to reload it, gets blocked so tries to reload, etc. When I first set up the pihole something like 30% of requests were blocked. Now that's right down to under 10% and I haven't changed anything.
I have been considering moving my email away from google, but the shared calendars with others are an issue.
I use google shared calendars but not email, but I think in terms of email trackers using alternate clients helps. I use FairEmail on Android and Thunderbird (or BetterBird) on my computer.
I also use Firefox Relay for disposable email addresses, which can remove trackers from emails and stop you being tracked across sites. The downside is I can't start an email from an alias, only reply to one, so if I order something and put the email in then they only send me a confirmation from a donotreply email, I have no way to email them from the alias to find out why they haven't sent my order.
So for now I mostly use it for accounts and email lists and not for purchases.
For anon email I use OnionMail and fantasy name generator.
For stuff I want to keep, I add a myEmail+serviceName@gmail.com to see who is tracking / selling my details / getting hacked. I can easily block the service name that leaked my details.
The thing about that + trick, is it's very easy to strip from the email.
What I like about Firefox Relay is the browser extension that makes it easy to generate new ones and will remember which site you did it at. I also wanted an excuse to financially support mozilla.
But there are heaps of others, Proton, (who bought simplelogin), Anonaddy, duckduckgo operates a free one, etc.