Jason Hernandez

I suppose more ideas for passive income would go in the "More coin please" category? Affiliate links may be fine for someone who has a website that gets visitation, but I don't see as we can all do that.

Dale Hodgins wrote:Punishment or the threat of punishment when he's in that state, would not be appropriate.

I tend to think of punishment as never being appropriate; but I recognize that is my own past trauma.

Dale Hodgins wrote:My oldest brother is autistic. When he was 11 they decided the demons needed to be cast out of him.

Oh, I've been there, only it wasn't my family, but some roommates. It took me some years to figure out that the exorcism was bogus, just me reacting to manipulation. Autistic people are more susceptible to abuse, I am told, be cause we don't know how to recognize it when we see it.

But that's not what I want to add to this discussion. This thread has reminded me of my late mother. As often happens, we had no idea of her mental health issues when we were kids; it was something we only came to understand as adults. She would go through these strange phases, often, though not always, food-related. For instance, in her Shrimp Phase, her lunch every single day was a baking sheet of shrimp. Until she got a bad batch -- and for the rest of her life, she never again ate a shrimp.

But her bigger issue was hypochondria, and possibly Munchausen disorder as well. By the end of her life, she had more than 100 different prescriptions for all kinds of different things. I really do think that her unnecessary prescriptions caused her to die before her time -- my dad is around the same age as she would have been, and he only just retired, whereas she basically lived as an invalid for close to twenty years before expiring.

What would have been the compassionate thing to do here? Once I was an adult, I always was skeptical of all her meds; but in my autistic lack of social graces, I did not know how to be tactful about it, and that created some friction between us. When my oldest sister oversaw her move to the nursing home, she worked with the geriatrician to taper mom down to maybe two or three prescriptions; the geriatrician was surprised that mom had talked so many doctors into prescribing so many things. I sure would have liked to be able to do this earlier; I think she would have had a better quality of life as well as a longer life. Going along with her, I would not consider ideal. But when someone has a mental health issue, you can't apply normal reasoning.

Through it all, I continued to love her with a fierce intensity. I came back from the Dominican Republic to the States to fulfil her dying wish to see me one last time, and once she was gone, I felt lost for nearly two years -- lost, as in, "what am I going to do now?" A person with mental health issues can still be very important to someone.

Okay. I haven't been around here much, because I needed time to think about whether I can even contribute meaningfully under the publishing standards. (Not that I would expect to be missed if I left; I know that's not how forums like this work). Here is some perspective.

In the thread called "CENSORSHIP - Paul Wheaton Requested," there were two opinions expressed as to how an internet forum ought to be run; one by Henry Coulder, the other by Paul Wheaton. Now, from my perspective, I would not hold these two opinions as having equal weight -- and not because Paul owns the website. Suppose I was thinking of starting my own online forums, and was interested in best practices as to how to do that. I come here, and see that Henry had no experience running forums, and Paul had many years of such experience. That bit of information would cause me to weight Paul's opinion on the matter more heavily. More so when I additionally find out that Paul originally tried it Henry's way and found that it didn't work.

Anyway, the trouble I got into over the topic of this thread was induced by my impressions of that jungle known as social media. My impression of the social media ethos is: "If someone somewhere believes it, it's true -- unless it's established science." To cite actual research scientists on social media is to invite accusations of being sheeple or worse. I feared that this site had bought into that same ethos.

So what you're doing is unconventional, but you can show me practically that it works? Great. That actually fits my definition of science -- it's an experiment. In Spanish, the verb, "to experience" is experimentar. All of us permies who try things out to see what works and what doesn't are on the most basic level actually doing science. Which is why I do not understand anti-science sentiment -- the disdain for people who make a career of doing essentially the same thing, just on a larger scale and with more funding and better equipment.

Scientific consensus is simply the sum total of all experimental results, which is why it sometimes changes when different experiments are done.

Henry had no experience running online forums, Paul had many years of such experience, and that affected my weighting of their differing opinions on the running of online forums. How is this different from, say, a scientist who has studied viruses for many years, and a blogger who has not? Why wouldn't my weighting of their differing opinions on viruses follow the same pattern?

There is some species of native guppy in the Rio Magante, although I have yet to identify it exactly. The dominant male of each group has orange fins, but otherwise, they are not colorful. I have been thinking that I would like to try them in an aquarium, and since they are native, they should be well adapted to conditions.

Well, you could try the experiment with just one -- one that you wouldn't mind losing if it turns out not to work.

There's that word "should" again, I know. I saw an article on Mongabay: Can Palm Oil Be Grown Sustainably? Research Suggests It Can, and Without Chemicals. Well, okay -- but then there is the question of whether oil palm, even if grown sustainably and without chemicals, is an appropriate crop to be growing, considering its uses. Junk food and the chemical substances people put on their bodies?

On the other hand, it does have potential as a biofuel, too, which would help to cut down on carbon emissions?

So what do you all think? Do you see oil palm having a place in tropical permaculture? Or is this a side track we could do without?

Data can be problematic around here, I know, because it creates a temptation to use that forbidden f-word. Still, data (and that forbidden word) are what I understand. And as research mounts, it turns out that there is increasing data to support our Permie principles. Mongabay ran a story on cacao farming in Indonesia, comparing hand-pollination with the more usual toxic-gick methods, and as it turns out, hand pollination, even with the increased labor cost, outperformed toxic gick in generating income.

Getting Hands-on with Pollination Can Boost Cocoa Yields

To summarize: usually, only 5-10% of cacao flowers are pollinated. By pollinating by hand, cacao farmers find that yields increase anywhere from 51% to 161%, which is enough to make the labor-intensive technique worthwhile. The Indonesian chocolate-growing region is already a fertile soil area, so it no real surprise that chemical fertilizers make little difference there. It makes me wonder why chemical fertilizers became prominent in the first place; but I suppose a likely explanation is that such products are presented to farmers as being necessary, and they might not look beyond "received wisdom."

Hopefully, this will spread to other cacao-growing regions of the world.

I could post a link, but those of you who can answer the question do not need one. The website is trying to sell product, so of course it is going to post the rave reviews. I am looking for perspectives from people who have no vested interest in selling this product. Those of you who have used the Almond Cow, is it worth it?

Karl Treen wrote:

Thank you so much for your support! Please make sure to note that these cards can be used to play many games, NOT just one. This is the most common point that people miss.

The cards are intended as an open-ended invitation to game creators and regenerative gardening enthusiasts. While I have developed several games for the cards, and will be working on more this fall, I really hope that a community or people will evolve to create more games for these cards.

So the idea is for them to be on a par with the traditional playing cards, with the four suits, Aces, Kings, etc. Those would not be nearly as well known if there was only one game that could be played with them. One kind of cards for poker, a completely different set for rummy, yet a third for bridge; I doubt there would be as much interest in card games if it was like that. I do find that idea to be in keeping with our values -- multipurpose as opposed to a separate thing for each single purpose.

I like this idea a lot better than the (Your-City's-Name)-opoly phenomenon. A game about predatory capitalism, with advertising incorporated into the game board. How many who buy those games are aware of the inherent propaganda?

echo minarosa wrote:
But there are clearly times when feeding is detrimental. Look no further than public feeding spots for ducks and geese. People usually bring junk food...bread to feed them. You almost never see grains, fish parts, etc (depending on what your recipient is). One place in my area is between 5 restaurants and people bring out their doggy bags for the ducks and geese. All they get is inappropriate food all the time. The birds are there in such huge numbers and in such a small area that diseases quickly spread and they get large population buildups which then crash. The diseases like avian botulism are horrible ways to die. People mean well but don't understand the implications of their actions.

This made me think of what might well be called unintentional bird feeding. In coastal cities, gulls learn to scavenge out of public trash cans; an area like a food court, where the trash cans get heavy use and are not always emptied before they overflow, people may be feeding the gulls without even being aware of it, by throwing unfinished food in the trash cans. Hamburger buns are made of white bread, just like the bread being fed to the ducks in your scenario, and then there are the heavily salted French fries, greasy pizza remnants, and suchlike.