people think we didn't try talking first. telling them to fuck off, refuting their trash ideology or even trying to persuade them out of it. they loved that shit. they were there to talk but they were not there for any great debate. fuckers were there to recruit, it was preditory. they did not fuck off until it was clear we would make them, AND that we'd do it before they opened their mouths. they fucked off when the recruitment pool was closed to them.

guess i can see how on paper a bunch of kids living off pabst and shoving eachother around to loud music, was a good hunting ground. they read that particular room wrong though. and "punch them until they left" was they only way they were gonna go.

I wish you luck saving them. its been an interesting year.

make sure to remove any blooms before you spray if you havent used the stuff in the past. neem oil and every fungicide ive seen screw with reporoductive cycles of friend and foe alike. i say that as much for anyone else stumbling onto this thread.

alternating neem oil and "Bonide Captain Jack's Copper Fungicide". the fungicide was just the cheapest one i saw on amazon when it became clear neem oil wasnt gonna be enough this year. my 4b winter was weak, closer to 6a, so fungi have been going crazy. all the lilac leafs turned black and fell off in july across the whole region. like they decided to nope out of summer and start fall right away.

almoat lost a couple roses to that early this spring so i've been spraying obsessively. mildew seems to be under control so far.

there had been beans and corn in there early on. the pumpkins had other plans. they'd even made it onto the plum tree but a storm yanked them off last week.

the article ends on a pitch for an ai bot making your paid posts. it's trash. the article itself is the kind of lazy trash you get when you start leaning into monitization. you're right, the fediverse isnt a monolith, not even inside distinct cultural regions.

for me at least. the answer to more media like this article appearing. so we grow an have more content and grow more. will be finding somewhere else to be. thats just the social media cycle. something cool gets made. a community starts forming. someone says "look at those idiots. dont they know how money works? a few of them could be making so much of it. i'll show them how and make some myself too". the rough edges of the space get smoothed out because if you want to make the site sucessful it should look more like how the sucessful spaces look. and a bunch of people move on to make something new again while bots have arguments with bots.

creators are welcome to post in the fediverse and tag their paid platform so long as they respect the rules of whatever community they post in. everyone has to eat. turning the fediverse into a tansactional platform is just coporate social media with extra steps. the articles getting downvoted because its one step shy of a linkedin ad disguised as a post. if i wanted to read posts about the beauty of the grind or some other nonsese, i'd be on fucking twitter or facebook. this place exists specifically to not be those places.

oh i had to go biological warfare on the masquito larve twice in the first three weeks before i add the duckweed and small solar fountains.

theres a little one in the back that creats a dorky waterfall to keep the water circulating. so far the duckweeds kept evaporation down and the toads keep the misquitoes in check.

couple beams to sit on and watch bees visit. the beams and the planter shade half the pond to help keep the temp down. so now i have a couple toads hanging out. the planter bottom slopes so water runs off the sides instead of into the pond. but i didnt get enough sand an rock in the bottom layer of it. so the soil in the planters been too wet for most things this season.

guys at work comlaining about their divorce to anyone entering an enclosed room. four different times when i was forced to work in an office and twice so far in slack. mother fucker i dont known you but i already get why she left. stop trying to force random people to be your therapist.

I'm in the same spot and 95% settled on moving to debian.

xubuntu has been good to me the last 10yrs. But its been about xfce, ubuntu got be part of the relationship because it was easy when i knew very little about linux. that and it can run well on a potato with a bunch of computer parts just duct taped randomly onto it. which is basically what my dumpster dived laptop was 10 yes ago.

thats just a short term fixes too though. the ads will get more intrusive and annoying. and at some point pro ads will just turning themselves back on. because this is a company and it wants to sell things.