Squiddles

I was vegetarian for 11 years, fully plant based for 2, and I did cook meat at events with people who ate meat. No demographic is a singularity, though, and there are many veggie folk who wouldn't, either on ethical grounds or on grounds of having no bloody clue how to cook meat properly.

Thanks!

The goji were from Baker Creek seeds this year, but next year it'll be from cuttings. I thought I killed all the goji I got as cuttings last year, but one was just hiding under the chicory. Cuttings apparently start fruiting a year or two faster, and I'll need to hack it back in the Winter anyway, so win-win.

Chard is totally underrated, both as food and an ornamental. I grow red chard, and in the late fall it turns the most unearthly dark-green/purple with glowing red veins. I keep the pink chard towards the front of the garden because it looks like someone's goofing around with the saturation, but in real life. I also grow white chard (Lucullus) for eating, and last year the leaves were delicious the whole Summer here in the high desert and literally the size of my five year old. Like, the entire kid. In the Winter some of the outer leaves die off, but the bulk survives, so it's great for visual interest in the front yard during the cold months. Big fan of chard

I lined my disused enclosed chicken run with compost, mulched it with burlap, and planted the whole inside perimeter with a bunch of varieties of pole beans hoping that they'll grow to the sloped roof and hang down for easy harvest. They're just starting to grab onto the walls now. I also shook a large packet of bunching onions around the perimeter. No idea how any of this will turn out, but I'm hoping it'll get completely overgrown, turn into a cave, and be a fun place to hang out in with the kiddo when the heat gets (more) extreme.

Related adventure: this year I grew about a hundred and fifty extra seedlings to give away in front of the house, and they're almost all gone after half a week. I thought about it for the last few years and finally decided to just do it. Lessons learned: cherry/pear tomatoes were unsurprisingly popular, and I overestimated how many people like eggplant. Next year I need to grow way more culinary herbs and novelties like roselle, ground cherries, artichokes, and goji--those all disappeared fast. I also put out seeds: everyone loves sunflowers and tithonia, but literally no one wanted to grow chard.

I'll have to check that out! There's also Cachalot by Alan Dean Foster, which is an old favorite of mine. Humans give cetaceans their own planet and--without spoiling too much--shenanigans ensue.

I have two steam accounts, and I was not able to see anything related to a game marked private from my second account except when family sharing was enabled between the accounts. With family sharing on I could see all private games from my primary account on my secondary (including games which were not installed on the local system).

If you have family sharing on, hold off. Otherwise as far as I know it works as intended.

Just to clarify, it's not just that there's an Android API to ask for permissions that apps use to show a consistent UI: that's the way that apps actually get access to whatever feature they're requesting, and if they don't go through that API they don't get access. An app can't just decide in an update that it wants access to contacts without asking. The Android API to get contact info checks the app requesting the info and won't give it anything if the user hasn't explicitly granted that permission to that app. Most commonly when something like this comes up it's a permission that was granted in the set of permissions requested when the app was installed and the user just skipped through the prompt and they don't realize they granted access to contacts.

For the curious, here's the Android developer guide page that describes how Contacts permissions work for app authors. And the page describing permissions in general, how to request, etc.

Edit to add: You can go into the settings for the app (not in the app itself, but in the app manager under your device settings, usually also accessible by holding on the app's launcher icon and going to Info) and you can remove permissions that you've granted previously. So if you're worried about this you can yank the Contacts permissions at the OS level and it doesn't matter what the Discord settings are, they won't be able to access your contacts anymore.

Access to Contacts has to go through the Android API, which means the user has to explicitly grant permission for Discord to access that specific functionality. That's what the comment you're replying to meant: access to contacts is protected at the operating system level and they've seen the source code on the OS side. Permissions might have been granted by the user reflexively, just muscle memory, when setting up Discord, but it absolutely had to have happened if Sync Contacts was enabled. Unless there's some kind of bug where Discord enables the in-app setting without actually having the permissions to access contacts--I guess that could be possible. It couldn't actually see any contact info in that instance, but it would try. If I go into Discord settings and try to enable the Sync Contacts option my phone displays the built-in Android permissions prompt with the text "Allow Discord to access your contacts?"

You as a consumer will not ever buy GMO seeds, accidentally or intentionally. Because the genome is a protected product, farms who buy GMO seeds from companies like Bayer (formerly Monsanto) have to enter into a legal agreement with the seed supplier, and they buy massive quantities at a time. Many public seed companies proudly declare their seeds are non-GMO, but that's true of all seeds you'd be purchasing.

The seedless plants that you as a consumer can buy are bred by creating a sterile hybrid between two non-sterile lineages. It's essentially a "defect" in the children of the two lineages which prevents their progeny from developing seeds even though they still develop fruit.

Edit to answer the rest of your questions:

Legal to use biological waste: Use freely.

How the patents work: Patented plants are basically just a legal protection for the company that produces the seeds you're buying. They've put a lot of work into generating lineages of pepper plants which can be cross-bred to produce seedless peppers, and their patent ensures that they are the only legal supplier of these plants (these specific plants--someone else could breed separate lineages and patent their plants without any issue). The USDA website and US Patent and Trademark Office website have more information, but I'll summarize: You could be sued if you bought their patented seeds, grew pepper plants from those seeds, then created a business to propagate and sell those pepper plants. You, at home, growing food for you and your family/friends? No one cares. The patent only exists to prevent another company from taking the plant that the original company painstakingly bred and selling it as their own.

Implications for society: You can't build a business selling their patented plants without a licensing agreement, I guess. Nothing odious about hybrids, and protecting specially-bred plants is enshrined in the Plant Patent Act of 1930, so it's been around a long long time.

I feel out of the loop. Not sure if it's me just getting old or not understanding social nuances, but this all feels like people drawing lines and taking sides on something that's going to vary based on cultural background, age of peers, personal experiences and idiosyncrasies, etc. I don't feel like it's a good situation to have two (or more) sides each claiming that it's offensive to them if someone who doesn't know them responds using a different side's preferred response. Kinda puts customer service workers in an impossible situation.

I reflexively say "thanks" when another human does something for me, and I don't particularly care what their habituated response is. Especially for people working customer service, who are just getting through their day and running their script. Mostly people echo the response that they're used to hearing from others, so unless I have some reason to think they're being snarky...??? Your noncommittal phrase of thanks received a noncommittal response, and both parties can move on from the exchange and do something else with their time and energy.

It's kinda flipped from how most people think of it. Dictionaries don't define which words the language contains--they just write down the meaning of words that people are using. Any word that's used commonly enough will be added to the dictionary. Webster also has "rizz", for example. That just popped into common usage a couple years ago and definitely wasn't coined by a dictionary.

My favorite nonsense words lately have been from Australia. They have whipper-snippers, grow Warrigal greens, eat wombock, and chase off bin chickens. Giving language a purple-nurple is practically the national Aussie pastime.

Congrats on the kiddo! We called this phase "the worm of obligation".

My kid is five years old, and it's absolutely my favorite phase so far. I can play imagination games and video games with them (Goat Simulator is the current favorite) and have great conversations. They're wicked smart, empathetic and caring, a great hiking buddy, and their vocabulary is stunning. Seeing the dots connect and the excitement in their voice when they realize how something works is absolutely magical!

I know my experience isn't typical, but I wanted to slip in some advice. Parents can't help it. Until about six months ago my kid had some gnarly emotional control issues that they were in therapies for. We joked that their motto was "no, and fuck you for asking", and it was honestly the saddest and most brutal four years of my life. I had expectations for the experiences I would share with them, and they just couldn't play the part I imagined. Their sensory needs are the exact opposite of mine, and it was very difficult to work around. My core advice would be to be flexible. It's great to dream of how you'll play with them, but understand that the kinds of interactions that are joyful depends entirely on her. Don't be too invested in any particular activity--just look for opportunities to connect and play, even if it's not a game you enjoy. And stick with it. Some phases are just terrible, and it feels like it will never end. It can take months or years of gentle correction before a concept/rule sets in, and the temptation will be there to escalate negative reinforcement (being a parent gave me great insight into hamsters), but one day, with no apparent trigger, the lights flip on in some new brain region and they suddenly get it. Your biggest responsibility is to build a relationship and trust, not make them behave perfectly. They don't implicitly understand or care about arbitrary rules like "no climbing on the counters", or "don't put things in the cat".

My advice comes from my own experience, so it may not apply well to your kid. Actually, that's a good perspective for any parenting advice--you'll be the only expert in your kid. Take advice into consideration, but discard what doesn't apply to her specifically. A lot of parenting advice comes from "I tried X thing at the same time that the behavior happened to change" and a lot of the time what the parent was doing when the change happened was a coincidence (see B.F. Skinner's superstitious pigeons). Engage in good faith, be flexible, advocate for them, ask for help when you need it. Some things just won't happen until her brain is at a certain point of development, so support where she is in the moment, meet her on her terms, and be patient. You'll do great!

Halls of Torment is early access, but pretty good. It's a nifty fusion of Vampire Survivors and oldschool Diablo.