This coneflower has some serious Friday vibes

I find it very difficult to be objective about relative bbq style quality. It most strongly correlates to how many tons of rock and logs I have moved that week. Concurrently, my best bbq experience has been the brisket at the Union Creek chuck wagon outside of Prospect OR.

With the snow peas and a couple kinds of lettuce those container radishes are down to like $16 now.

I’m going to do conservation themed America 250 poasts for the next month celebrating America’s greatest contributions to the field of wildlife and natural resources conservation, and there are a lot of them. I hope you enjoy. Starting with America’s best idea: the national parks. Our ancestors came up with the concept, and we should be very proud of that. If you say the phrase “America’s best idea” to anyone working in conservation they know that you mean national parks, it annoys Europeans so it’s very fun to say. Yellowstone officially became the world’s first national park in 1872, setting off a global movement of national park creation all over the world. The enacting legislation contained the park’s democratic purpose in the iconic phrase, “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” This phrase embodies the ethos of American national parks: democratic access to nature and wildlife for all Americans. When we say Yellowstone was the very first national park, what we mean is that it was the first large, government-protected parcel of public land, set aside explicitly for protecting nature, allowing the public to enjoy it, and most importantly, for future generations of Americans. Before Yellowstone, protected areas were limited to royal hunting grounds overseas, private aristocratic estates, or small game reserves/clubs for wealthy members. Land was also primarily thought of for extractive use, so the idea of protecting it was new (and pretty out there actually). For the first time, land was intentionally excluded from development to protect scenery, wildlife, geology, and so on. National Parks were designed as a democratic ideal, where anyone could come and enjoy. They embody an idea that nature belongs to all Americans, not royalty and not just the wealthy, which was a major break with European conservation models where nature/wildlife was set aside for royals or large land owners. This is why the Roosevelt Arch (cornerstone laid by TR) is engraved with this iconic phrase. I’ll drop all these in an article at the end of the month so homeschoolers can use them if they’re tired of the “world is burning/extinction crisis” articles for kids.

In one sense it's correct that the young, highly online rw types are all talk no action, but there's also a timeframe issue. If you control for the social compassion heatmap thing the difference that remains between progressive and conservative people has a lot to do with the thoughtfulness vs impulsiveness dichotomy. Not a lot of conservative people are going to take leaps of faith without first putting all their ducks in a row. This takes time, a lot of it more often than not. I think you *could* bring back some of these cheap-house bombed out villages if you were very strategic about *where* exactly it was and didn't depend on it suddenly happening within just a couple of years. There has to be some commute proximity to ...some... variety of jobs not just one or two factories, a moderate climate, and a fairly neutral (as opposed to insular) culture. And probably not a radical blue taxes state. Neither the Canadian border, nor Appalachia, nor the South will work. Ohio, Indiana, (Eastern) Iowa, Southern Michigan, and maybe some parts of Western PA might fit, in basically that order. But moreover there has to be a lot of time for people to take it slow and make the move when they can get their ducks in a row. And the effort has to be independent of charismatic leader types that give conservatives the ick. There are actually some unique opportunities in bombed out middle America, and personally I'm taking advantage of it very nicely, but for the most part I keep my efforts private. I don't think I'm unique in this respect either.

Aptly named Butterfly Milkweed. (Asclepias tuberosa)

Being a "sensitive young man" is a gift, it just comes with a catch. The feels are valid, and you don't actually have to crush them, but no one should ever see them expressed as you experience them. The emotion has to be transmuted into passion, never expressed directly. Not passion for a person, at least not primarily, but for doing something for the world. Make, preserve, improve something in this life passionately, for others, even if its just for say your hypothetical children. Introspect and understand PRIVATELY, but always transmute. Fail at this and all other efforts to date or seek out whatever you want will also fail.

5" shorts are a mistake if you've got that long legs short torso build. Unless you're squatting 600lbs or track cycling, you just won't have the trunks for it. Looks gawky, leave em for the stubby guys.

There really aren't any restorable native habitats in our age of ubiquitous invasives. But there are vacant niches. California has enough bears for the large omnivore niche, but what it does need are large obligate carnivores undeterred by human presence. California needs tigers.

Remarkable what they're doing with Ethiopian light roasts these days. Seriously intense raspberry.

I'll take them both ... and throw them on the ground

Look man, I'm in the woods all day, all week; I should NOT learn that such a thing as a DARK FISHING SPIDER, which is roughly the size of an iphone, exists while I'm sitting at the computer eating crab classic. Who named this thing? Did they see it snatching bullheads outta the Ohio under a full moon? Gotta be some serious lore here. And why is it in my house? Did it come for the surimi?

Connecticut may not be a real state, but it was stone find of the week. Going to be a cap for a natural stone culvert.

I'd bet good money these metal raised beds are going to look very dated and trashy very fast. The pink flamingo of the 2020s.

Thought maybe I needed another cup of coffee, but we're good now.

This reveals something about the quality of people generally, with respect to how they operate online. The people I value most here are those who've disagreed with me at some point, yet remained civil about it. Or even those who haven't been so civil but don't slam the door.

Ooh yeah, keeper

There's a certain sort of writer who cannot resist dog whistling their politics within the first chapter. It's made nature writing, and much of historical fiction now damn near ENTIRELY unreadable, even if the writer has talent. This trash is case in point. "Mansplaining" in a story about Colonial Era logging, fugoff. You're a 50yo man with no chin; the undergrads aren't gonna sleep with you. Just stop it.