I was watching this fairly suburban-looking, I’d argue high consumption household, generating lots of paper and plastic trash, out in the country in rural Ohio where they are allowed to burn ordinary household trash. While it seems like they got backed up on trash burning chores, I was struck by how much trash this girl was tossing into the fire.
I don’t get upset with throwing a little bit of plastic into a fire or burning it with the trash, especially common throw-away plastics like Number 1, 2 and 5 resins. While there is inevitably some plasticizers, colors, and chemicals that are toxic, most modern trash isn’t the toxic soup it once was in the 1970s and 1980s both due to government regulation and voluntary changes by the paper and plastics industry. It’s not say you should stand downwind of a burning barrel and breathe in the smoke, but it’s also not nuclear waste that is typically part of household trash.
When you burn your household trash, you are in many ways dependent on weather conditions. It really can’t be pouring rain, your burn barrel can’t be full of snow, or things too bone dry. Without weekly trash pick up or regular trash burns, things can, as the video notes really get backed up. I know over the years when I don’t get to the transfer station or have fires up in the woods, I can end up with multiple bags to burn, even after compacting the trash down and separating out things like cans, and sometimes paper and plasitc for recycling.
That said, there is an alternative to burning or hauling off all this trash – it’s to make a lot less of it. Some packaging in our modern world is inevitable, but the frugal shopper buys in bulk, gets raw ingredients and natural products that only come with their skin for composting. Plastics and paper recycling is fine, but I’m not convinced that it’s much better at all for the environment then burning it on the rural homestead. It does make an excellent fire starter, especially if you keep paper separated out and dry, and compost the organics. That said, some heavier plastics like old extremely boots, if you can’t reuse them probably are best disposed of through the urban landfill system or maybe the farm dump if you have a lot of land.
Also I’m not convinced that burn barrel is the best way to incinerate and dispose of packaging on the homestead or farm. It’s not to say I’m against burning, indeed it’s a powerful tool for waste disposal on small scale. But burn barrels smolder and stink, they encourage people to mix in wet organics with wet paper, maximize hazardous byproducts of poor combustion. Almost any kind of homemade incinerator would be better then a burn barrel, especially with forced air and accelerant like lighter fluid and uesd motor oil to get it started. Or even a fire pit with lots of wood scraps to get a roaring fire, to quickly break down the chemicals in the paper and plastic. Trash fires need not stink when burning ordinary packaging if done right.
I’m all for burning as a waste disposal solution on rural homesteads. I don’t see it as a great evil. But I think it’s best done after minimizing and composting wastes, keeping paper dry and reusing whatever is possible and only burning as a last resort. Not using a stinking, smoldering burn barrel as part of an essentially suburban consumption pattern, which otherwise would be replaced by weekly garbage pickup to a distant landfill.
And disappointed when they don’t work. I know everybody starts at the basics, and builds up from there. But I like shinny objects much too much.
I’ve just been trying to figure out how to link and use big modern C++ libraries using cmake and visual studio. When the truth is I should be mastering C code and automake and VIM. That’s what the work computers have on them, and it’s simpler, probably faster and more reliable.
But at the same time I don’t want to reinvent the wheel and I want to do useful and interesting projects for myself and not another boring hello world project. R is great, but I want to program a real language, namely C. Yet, I find myself incredibly frustrated with broken build environments.
Pinto beans are one of the most inexpensive forms of beans you get in bulk at Walmart and other grocery stores. I usually get the 4-lb bag and split it into cookings ont he stove. While it does use electricity to simmer down the beans for a couple hours, pinto beans aren’t just incredibly delicious with some maple syrup or salt, cooked with eggs or fried with onions, they remarkably healthy source of protein and fiber.
Specifically, Google Gemani notes the following health benefits to a diet rich in pinto beans:
Rich in Protein and Fiber: Pinto beans provide a significant amount of plant-based protein
d dietary fiber, making them excellent for vegetarians and vegans, aiding in digestion, promoting a healthy gut, and supporting weight management.
Nutrient-Dense: They are a good source of essential nutrients, including folate, thiamin, magnesium, potassium, iron, and copper, all of which play crucial roles in energy production, immune function, and muscle and nerve health.
Antioxidants: Pinto beans contain beneficial phytonutrients, such as flavonoids and polyphenols, which act as antioxidants and can help protect the body’s cells from damage.
Supports Heart Health: The soluble fiber and potassium in pinto beans can help lower cholesterol levels and maintain healthy blood pressure, contributing to better cardiovascular health.
Helps Control Blood Sugar: The fiber content in pinto beans also helps to stabilize blood sugar levels, which is beneficial for managing diabetes.
Often when news reports are discounting conspiracy theories regarding elections, they note that no polling machines are connected to the internet. This on it’s face is true, in the sense that no jurisdiction currently uses vote tabulation machines that are permanently connected to internet — on Election Day and at Early Voting sites, the machines are air-gapped from the internet. For security reasons, this is unlikely to change anytime in the future, though it would be convenient if voting tabulators could submit their initial tabulations back to County Board of Elections over the Internet for reads of speed, though that opens up a security bucket of worms. Some jurisdictions might use a separate device to beam back initial results from an electronic results, which could protect the chain of custody of the vote tabulations.
However, what is not true, is that all election equipment is fully air-gapped from the internet. Electronic poll logs, that list who is eligible to vote by their very nature are connected to the internet. Typically, they use a secure SSL connection and a VPN to send and receive information on who is eligible to vote at a polling site. Between the SSL connection and VPN, it’s very unlikely that such machines would be subject to a man-in-the-middle attack, modifying the lists of who has voted and is eligible to vote. Probably the only realistic threat vector is electronic poll books could have their software or firmware hacked to add or remove voters outside of the normal secure data connection.
The thing about an electronic poll book hack is it’s unlikely to change the result in elections much, as such a hack could only allow a handful of people to vote multiple times by physically driving to multiple early voting and polling sites. Any wide-spread conspiracy to engauge in multiple voting would involve a lot of people, and when you have a lot of people, you have a lot of people who will talk and brag about their exploits. After all, that’s how most poachers get busted these days — bragging to their friends, especially on the Internet. Both Democrats and Republicans vigorously defend their candidates, and if even they had a hint that somebody was hacking electronic poll books, and then gangs of people were driving around to multiple polling places, then it would be a news story and authorities would investigate.
If for some reason, either the Democrats or the Republicans became a feeble party, without strong advocates, then it’s possible that such corruption could persist and be overlooked. But in such a case, you wouldn’t have any safeguards at any level of the process. Indeed, if the Democrats and Republicans got together to change the vote, then the Election Inspectors could stuff the machine themselves. Or even the County Boards of Election commissioners could stuff machines or change tabulations. But that would only happen if one side was totally absent from the process, and there was no outside party advocates for the Democrats and Republicans. But right now, that is far from the case, with both political parties at each other throats. Democrats aren’t going to let Republicans cheat, nor will Republicans let Democrats cheat. Both are watching the process carefully to make sure the other-side plays the way that is consistent with the law.
Most unfairness in elections isn’t unlawful. Indeed, most unfairness is baked into the laws and institutions that govern voting. Political parties are experts are tilting the system to benefit incumbents, as the thing politicians care about the most is re-election. There are hundreds of ways elections are rigged in law to benefit incumbents, some obvious like gerrymandering, but others much more subtle regarding the methods and times of voting, or how absentee ballots are counted or petitions reviewed. Rigging can only go so far, and mostly impacts close elections and promulgates exclusion of fringe candidates, as most Americans believe elections should be relatively fair, even if they do prefer their candidate to win.
I find it much too easy to spend endless hours flipping through social media and news articles like on NY TImes, when I should be reading. The quick dopamine hit is so appealing when I don’t have the time or desire to sit down and do a deep dive into topic, learning important new skills and ideas only taught in a book. Color, pictures, artwork, or even the political controversy of the day are so appealing as a distraction for a tired mind, when there is so much out there I should be learning about.
I totally want to ride my mountain bike to work and not take the yokel-local bus or my big jacked up truck to work if at all possible today. I think I might be in luck, as it looks like the rain will pull off in the next hour or so, as the skies lighten up.
The new ramp from Cherry Avenue to Albany County Rail Trail is now officially open, 🚲 though for about three weeks now I’ve been dodging the barricades and using it before the politicians had their public masterbation celebration with the cutting of the ribbon 🎀. Honestly, I much prefer that route to riding through the squiggly piggly suburban sprawl route, past the wealthy woke houses with their chemical lawns and overflowing garbage bins every Monday morning and SUVs spewing chemicals into the air. The ones that pretend to recycle and give a damn with their solar panels on their roofs. ☀️ Says the boy with the big jacked up truck who recycles mostly using fire to turn shit into carbon dioixde for the plants. 🔥 And dump the endless seeming piles of banana 🍌 peels and apple cores at my parents 5 acres in the sticks.
But it’s a much nicer ride once I reach the ramp and are plunged into the quietness of the rail trail, 🐐 as I continue to listen to more about Goat Farming for Dummies on my Hoopla Audio Book I got out of the library. 📚 Then it’s down to the ghetto, watching for the hungry welfare recipients as they never watch or give right away as the pull out of their subsidized housing in their bling-bling SUVs. And then it’s under the rumbling and falling apart Interstate 787 that the DOT and it’s contractors keep trying to patch and keep in service for a few more years. 🚗 Then past the garbage recycling plant, where they pull out the metals for the scrap yards and ship the plastics and paper mostly to landfill or maybe China where a market exists. And the stink of the sewage plants 🚽 where they scrape off the solids and burn them and then dump them atop the garbage heap in the Pine Bush. It beats driving, and it’s a chance to learn more about horney buck goats and producing your own meat and milk. My parents did the goat thing for many years when they were young. I’m less excited about dairying though, it’s so much fucking work if you don’t do it professionally. 🐮 Goats are great if you have a lot of trash land you want to get rid of the brambles and invasives, turn the trash into meat and manure. 🥩 💩 Just like hogs are great if you want to tear up the land and manure it into good earth 🌎 for growing shit. 🌱
Like usual I rode my bike downtown in the pitch black, through the Corning Preserve keeping an eye 👁️ out for muggers and drug dealers, then the later local bus home, and banged my way out to suburbs as it’s too dark to do the rail trail and after hours riding is supposedly banned though I’m not sure there is a ton of cops out there patrolling the trail, but who knows what sketchy characters hang out there in the pitch black. Got home, had more green pea soup 🍽️ but not too much as it’s made me so gassy. 😲 Some more homemade bread dipped in balsmatic vinger, then as a dessert I cooked down some cranberries 🍒 with Stevia, oatmeal and peanut butter powder as an excellent desert. Totally enjoying cranberries while their a thing in the holiday season, this morning was cranberry pancakes, with some banana, oatmeal, and carrot 🥕 in the mix. Dead asleep by 7:30 under my electric blanket just like a girly man who refuses to turn on the heat, up at 4:30 AM with the Teat Strippers once again 🐮 reading 📖 a book called The Heart of the Homestead. Dreaming of a life in the mountains that smells like cow shit and wood smoke, something like Allegany County minus of course the burn ban and the woke gun laws.
I like to add carrots to nearly every meal as it adds fiber and filling without calories, plus all that beta caratine helps improve my vision 👀. That said, six weeks out of LASIK, my vision at night is excellent, especially at night, with the last symptoms of the procedure – namely the haloes of street lights and headlights fading away – and overly bright, blown out reflective street signs being readable again. It’s amazing both how crystal sharp my day vision is and how much better I see at night. 💩 It seems like such a waste to send such high-quality poop to the landfill, I much prefer burying my shit in the woods, and the humanure handbook is an interesting read, but even a conventional outhouse is a step up from the shit world of burn fossil fuels and landfill everything as we steal from the colored and poor world we all live in.
