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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • I’m a big fan of trichogramma wasps, myself.

    I had a pantry moth infestation as a result of having birds (inherited from my mother - I’d never keep birds of my own choice, and I rehomed them after a few years)

    Anyway, because I had birds and cats, bug bombs were out of the question, but I found trichogramma wasps. They are stingless wasps about the size of a grain of sand, 1-2 mm tops, so you can barely see them, and they lay their egg inside moth eggs (and some 100 other species of mostly pest insects, but they prefer what they hatch from which is typically moth eggs) their daughter eats the moth larva, hatches, and can immediately lay fertile eggs in more moth eggs. No males in the species due to a gut bacteria, so all wasps hatch fertile.

    If anyone reading this needs this info, you can buy trichogramma wasps online, they aren’t expensive, you’ll want ~5k eggs for up to 2k sqft indoors (most sites I’ve seen this is the minimum order anyway, and back when I did it 8 years ago or so, cost me about $12/order, including shipping). They will escape through the window screens, and just die off if there aren’t enough target species’ eggs around, which is fine and not a problem. They can wipe out up to 95% of a targeted species when outdoors, but moths have a long life cycle so you need time to work through all the waves in your enclosed space. Just open the little cup inside, set it down somewhere near the kitchen or where you have the most moths, and that’s it. Repeat every 2-3 weeks until you don’t see moths anymore, which takes about 4-6 months. After that, for two more years, any time you see a moth inside, order another round and release them. This is a precautionary measure in case you still have a residual population hiding somewhere.


  • Unless this one works differently than the one I read about a month or so ago, which isn’t at all clear from this article, no, probably not something we can get as kids.

    The reason is that, at least at the moment, you need a sample of the cancer itself and protein markers for each individual, and each cancer type, so it’s a vaccine that you get only after you get the cancer. Plus it’s multiple doses over the course of several weeks.

    They also aren’t sure if the cancer will come back after being eradicated, so for now they have no idea how effective it will be, nor how long it’ll last.

    But this is a technology very much in its infancy. The first trial ever was earlier this year, so… who knows where it’ll go from there. Maybe they will be able to isolate enough common markers for enough cancers to have a childhood vax for prevention. Almost certainly a long ways off tho.








  • You, umm… might wanna think about not talking while us vast-majority-of-the-working-class are discussing how we are going to eat the rich… just a thought. I know people in your tax bracket, and they are all wildly out of touch with society, just like you appear to be. The most I can make in my area, degreed and with skills and all, is 40k, literally 10x lower than what you make. And you have the absolute audacity to complain.

    So… like… Nobody cares about your “struggle”. At all. Literally nobody ever. You are part of the problem as far as most people are concerned. And you probably actually are part of the problem to be whining like this, anyway.


  • I’m too old to know what kids are doing most of the time, tbh, but the kids on my street spend most of their time outside, tons of kids walk to and from school, it’s just a pleasant, generally low-key area. It helps that half my local area is dead ends due to the train tracks a couple blocks away in any direction, so not a lot of street traffic, emboldening kids to play outside.

    The majority of people of whom I am aware on my street are really nice and neighborly, or at least leave me alone, but it’s a rural-ish area and there are people who think laws don’t apply to them and their dogs… those people suck. The rest tho… my neighbor mowed my lawn for a year for me when I was sort of not capable myself, because he saw I had a company coming out and wanted to save me money, so now we sort of share the part of our lots that meet; because he mows it and I don’t have to think about it, I let him use it to store shit outside of his fence, even tho it’s mostly my property that I’m not using anyway. The old dude who used to mow in his tightie-whities gave me half a garden bed of lettuce because it overgrew. Just came up to my door one day with a bowl of dirty salad and said “here, it’s butter crisp. If you want more I have more.” And left. The neighbor directly across the street (where the black fam is moving in) often got my mail and brought it back, and so on. We all just exist here, sure, but it’s a pleasant area. Not like the communities of old, but… as good as ones likely to get these days.

    My new business neighbor is even taking my advice to be a better neighbor. It’s a warehouse nobody ever really used, and he doesn’t plan to use it that often either, so he’s going to change the building lights from omnidirectional eyesores into unidirectional, illuminating his property and the sidewalk around it but not my walls or the windows of houses across the street.

    But I grew up in an area where we didn’t lock doors, the postman, whomever it was, came into the house to deliver packages (technically a porch but not really… we also lived directly next to the post office so I’m sure my parents knew them well enough), I knew all the cops, and they lived in town (knew them due to my neighbor being a drug house, using said post office parking lot for house parties while on probation) and the mayor was my moms bff (best gay friend -he thought that acronym was stupendous!) I helped him with his campaign by printing t-shirts in my highschool photography lab back in like 2003 (which had a screen printer). So super small town vibe. This is close but not really the same.


  • We also need smaller houses damnit! Or more duplexes of reasonable size. We need more 2-4 family properties.

    Not tiny houses, not 300sqft nonsense buildings that cost more to have as standalone units…

    We need more 1-2 bedroom starter options, and fewer of the 4-6 bedroom micromansions that everyone builds because it’s more worth the money from a development side. Nobody can afford those things as first time buyers.

    And while we are at it, we need more apartments that can be purchased like condos or houses. Rent is all well and good for short term, but people should have long term ownership options even in big cities if they will be there for a while. It’s absurd your choices are basically rent and be at the whim of your landlord, or buy a standalone.




  • lol I would pay actual money to see trump live on my street for one year.

    For one thing, houses here were selling for 20-80k 10 years ago, so people without much money live here. (My neighbor bought his place for 25k in 2018, it needed a lot of work, sure, but all the same. Mine was 60 as a foreclosure in 2013 - 40k+ is a good yearly salary here…

    The renovated laundromat kiddie-corner to me is rented out by four black/hispanic families, and the kids are always playing in the street on bikes, boards, and scooters, the other end of the block is an unknown number of Hmong sharing a house (they have 6 vehicles between them, and I’m pretty sure they converted the garage to living space), there’s a 30-some-yo with downs that rides his trike around the block 6 times a day every day, talking to everyone very loudly, and the house across from me just sold to a big black family.

    That’s just what I know about; I keep to myself. There are 8 additional buildings with unknown entities. He’d hate it. I’d love it.




  • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoScience Memes@mander.xyzHoney
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    1 month ago

    Have you ever tasted flower nectar?

    I grow gladiolus sometimes, and they produce a lot of nectar, but there aren’t any pollinators for those flowers around me, so I remove the nectar myself with a syringe. There isn’t a lot in each flower, but it’s nice in a cup of tea.

    It doesn’t really taste like honey, even dilute honey. It doesn’t taste like just sugar water, either, though. I’m sure each flowering plant produces a subtly different flavor, like fruit.

    And indeed, honey apparently tastes different depending what the bees are feeding on. But I’d say it’s probably a mix of something bee-specific and the nectar itself.