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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Agriculture is water intensive. The more land we use, the more water we need. Whether from the sky or from a irrigation canal, it’s still water used to grow crops not native environments. Reducing our land footprint reduces our total water usage. That’s what matters, not the per hectare usage.

    Corn and wheat - just irrigating itincreases the average yield by 2x to 10x depending on the region.

    If you’ve never been in a 50 hectare greenhouse it’s hard to imagine (they are 12-15m tall). These greenhouses are all in soil as well. The larger a greenhouse is the more efficient it is as maintaining temperature. You can get 2-3 cycles per year in them depending on light levels. So the yields are irrigated + 50% per cycle and 2-3 cycles per year instead of 1 cycle. Supplemental lighting can push it to a solid 3 cycles.



  • Irrigated and/or protected culture… Protected culture for the crops that make sense. Irrigated in for all others.

    We farm the way we do because historically we go through periods of innovation then stagnation. When the way we farm no longer works and we either rapidly innovate again or the civilization flounders and dies due to famine and war.

    “Enormously expensive,” it’s all in perspective. It’s damn cheap compared to the cost of the environmental damage we are currently doing. FYI The equipment and technology already exist to do it as well.



  • The best thing for the environment and soil health is to not farm it. There is no such thing as environmentally friendly agriculture. It is always destructive.

    We farm the land we do because it’s profitable.

    Irrigated acres make up less than 7% of the land area used for agriculture but produce 65% of the total yield.

    Protected culture (greenhouses, high tunnels, etc) produce 10x to 20x more per acre than open field production.

    Increasing our water storage and transport infrastructure on a massive scale, combined with expansion of protected culture could reduce our agricultural land requirements by as much as 80%. All wiithout changing our diets.

    Imagine 80% of the farmland rewilded? Massive stretches of native ecosystems rebounding without fertilizer or sprays.





  • Basically, make a “business argument” for the upgrades. CEO’s are generally business bros with limited practical experience. They understand sales and people pleasing/kiss assing. So the right argument is usually how it will increase sales and make their employees more productive and happier.

    Unfortunately with the current equipment being 7 years old, “anything is better than the shit we currently have”. With win10 being put to pasture, your company needs to do a full replacement. So buy the cheaper ones that the CEO wants, then work on convincing him to buy the higher end ones when the cheap shit dies in the next 2-4 years.

    Phrase it like "Due to the urgency of our upgrade needs and budgetary constraints, I understand why we need to buy lower quality equipment. This equipment has a life expectancy of 2-4 years. I recommend when these lower quality models need replacement we go with a higher quality model and a life expectancy of 5-7 years. This will in the long term reduce our expected cost by $xxxx/year.





  • I think that the data Ukraine has on Russian losses is better than in any previous conflict. The drones are constantly flying over the battlefield recording.

    I also think that Ukraine has significant political reasons for attempting to be reasonably accurate. They rely on NATO for money, weapons, and supplies. They need to provide an reasonably accurate representation of what they are doing with the resources to keep their suppliers happy.

    It doesn’t need to be exact, just a reasonable estimate made in good faith.


  • Depends on the individual curcumstances.

    Not a lawyer, but have had way to many trainings on unemployment law over the years.

    Circumstance 1: An employee moved further away from the office and can no longer feesibly make the commute to the office. Back to office mandates would be a change in the primary work location. The employee would qualify unemployment even if they “quit”. This is the same for people who started remotely.

    Circumstance 2: The employee became the primary caregiver of children or a relative due to the flexibility allowed in working from home. A back to the office mandate would not allow them to continue this. The employee can argue for unemployment due to a change in the required work schedule (my wife successfully did this back in 2010).

    Circumstance 3: This one is a bit harder. The employee has performed their job superbly from home. They clearly and openly (preferably in writing) have stated they will not work in the office. The company has a back to the office mandate and then fires the employee for not showing up. The employee can argue this was a creative firing and the employer is on the hook for unemployment. The employee must have evidence that managers were aware of their unwillingness to work from the office prior to the mandate.



  • I upgraded from Windows XP to Vista after the 2nd servicepack fixed most of the shit. By that point it was a tolerable OS.

    I am currently hoping for a major service pack next year to fix all the stupid shit they did in Windows 11.

    You know kind of like when they fucked up windows 8, attempted a quick fix in 8.1 and finally fixed it in win10.

    Of course they are at 4 major updates with win11 and it’s still shit so the hope is very thin.



  • Firing middle managers is a fun way to kill the company. Not that cleaning house is a bad idea. Unfortunately the people making decisions of who to keep and who to let go are usually idiots.

    Middle Managers are promoted for two reasons: technical expertise and ass-kissing expertise. Now the technical experts tend to not mix well with incompetent parasitic c-suite types idiots. The ass-kissers are beloved by the c-suite as that is their only role in life.

    So when firings come around guess who they get rid of? Then 1-3 years later everyone is shocked when everything starts to fall apart.