They look like springtails to me. I use springtails and isopods in my gecko’s terrarium as a clean up crew.

The isopods eat the poop while the springtails eat any mold that would grow in moist conditions. I do have plants in there too so all that bug poop goes right back into the soil to be reused.

They can’t survive outside of a moist environment for long and will simply dry out. I have no idea how harmful they are to plants alone but at least you don’t have to worry about mold.

Omegaverse works are most frequently focused on male-male couples composed of an Alpha and an Omega,[6] though heterosexual Omegaverse works have been produced,[11] and by 2013, about 10% on Archive of Our Own were labeled male/female.[8]

The origin of the Omegaverse is typically attributed to the fandom surrounding the American television series Supernatural, as a fusion between werewolves and the male pregnancy subgenre of erotic fan fiction.

I read that wiki page and I can’t help but come to the conclusion that primarily gay werewolf fanfic is being used to promote fascism?

I prefer my absurdist and surrealist humour to be works of fiction D:

I had an experience in Germany that really stuck with me. It highlighted to me the difference in how men are treated around children. As a north American, it’s assumed that older men around children is an unsafe situation and that left me feeling doubt and uneasiness whenever I was around children.

I had the opportunity to work and travel in Germany for a year and picked up a job as a home cleaner. Think Uber but for private property cleaners.

I was scheduled to clean a home I’ve never been to before and the owner told me that their son would be there to let me in. When I arrived, I called the home owner and she let her son know to let me in. He was probably about 10 years old and I was completely shocked that this person was trusting a complete stranger with her son who was home alone. I did my job and let him stay in his room and didn’t bother to clean his room when he refused after I asked.

I did get a chance to meet the parents on later visits to clean but that really put it into perspective to me just different men can be treated in different parts of the world.

My future allies for the future water wars kindly disagree :)

I’ve never understood why people think wasps are so aggressive. At least where I live. They are curious like a bumblebee although slightly more persistent in hanging around.

If I am eating food, I leave a bit for them just within arms reach so they feast on that rather than what I’m eating.

They seem pretty chill if you’re willing to share your space and food with them.

This game has caught my eye. The visual style alone is what really draws me in to the world.

There’s something about the Half-Life-ish graphics and unique style that sort of hits a personal nostalgia for me. It has a wonderful combination of weird and abstract with a touch of familiarity. It also feels both vibrant and gritty at the same time. Something I didn’t realize I was missing so much. Especially after playing Baldur’s Gate 3 which has absolutely gorgeous but very busy graphics.

After I get over my Caves of Qud hyperfixation, I am definitely going to pick this game up.

I wouldn’t mind if societies also made some compromises for me too. Currently it feels like I’m making all the compromises to fit in but made to feel like it’s never enough.

Feels like I’m trying to fix an awful relationship by doing all the hard work myself. I’m tired.

I try to remind people that doing nothing is not a bad thing and something you can enjoy. Productivity can be quite addictive for some people. For others, it can be so ingrained into their mindset that they are driven by guilt to remain productive.

In a couple years from now when the sun finally decides to kill all life on earth for shit and giggles, all that progress and productivity won’t mean anything. I’d rather chill the fuck out and enjoy the nice views with the people I like around me and I only have one life to do that.

For a little background, I worked in the field for about 5-6 years, half the time as a contractor/helper, and the other half as an apprentice (which I never completed). The company built automation lines which primarily did metal welding. High voltage spot welding, Automated MIG welding and Laser welding/braising.

As for wastefulness, I don’t even know where to start and I am sure I will miss a bunch of things. In no particular order of importance:

1. Automation requires A LOT of materials. Pipes, cables, trays, robots, supports, safety, devices, fasteners and the list goes on. Keep in mind that All these materials need to be extracted, transported, refined and remade into what we need to build an automation line.

2. Automation is Heavily dependent on fossil fuels. We need machines to extract raw materials. We need machines to transport raw materials. We need machines and heat to refine raw materials. We need machines and heat to create a final product. We need to transport those final products and then we can finally work with that final product to install into an automation line. Some materials that we work with such as cables, hosing and tubing will create some sort of waste during the installation process. Maybe not as much as the other steps but it all adds up in the end.

I worked in electrical and all of our cables would have some sort of plastic/rubber/silicone sheathing. I honestly don’t know how we can expect to keep up with the growing electrical demand AND cut down on crude oil extraction. We need insulators to safely use electricity and plastics do that job very well.

I don’t know how resource extensive it is to make a microprocessor, but I imagine it still takes a lot of machinery and heat to create them. Microprocessors are in a lot of devices used in automation.

3. Wear and tear on mechanical parts. Robots are great for doing repetitive tasks. Robots and anything that moves (conveyors or clamps, for example) will involve moving parts. Anything with moving parts will wear down eventually. Those parts are generally trashed and replaced with a functioning part.

4. Electronic Devices. Computers, PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers), Sensors, power supplies, transformers, lights, and HMI (Human-Machine Interface) are some of the devices used in automation. Lots of plastics, metals and microprocessors. Since these are electronic devices, they need to be shipped in plastic to ensure the devices are free from moisture or shock damage. The plastic wrapping and plastic shock foam pads that have no purpose after the device has been removed from the packaging get thrown out.

5. Shipping. Everything coming in or leaving has to be shipped. For smaller items, they may be bundled up on a transport skid which may mean it is wrapped in layers and layers of shipping plastic wrap in order to secure the load. Larger items may require plastic or metal tie-down straps. All of which are disposed of after use. Robots, tooling, fencing, piping, cables, power disconnects and so on are VERY heavy. All this weight requires so much fuel to transport from place to place before reaching the final installation site.

6. Reusing vs. replacing. Depending on the request, we may reuse old robots or tools but in many cases, A LOT of old, still usable material just gets chucked into the trash. Companies care less about waste and more about downtime. It’s far quicker to tear out the old, bring in new cables/piping/tray, slap it in and get that power running as soon as possible.

7. Weight. Things are getting heavier. Heavier stuff means bigger robots. Bigger robots require more power. You can probably look back at some previous points to understand why the extra weight is not good.

8. Energy consumption. As we push further into automation, we require more electrical power. Before I left my company, the power demand was increasing at a mind blowing rate. Towards the end of my time there, I spent months with a couple other people prepping high voltage power main disconnects. When I first started there, there was only one person prepping disconnects when the demand required it.

9. Oils and fumes. Moving parts generally require lubrication. Greases and oils are generally not so nice to the environment considering the actions required to handle, dispose of, or clean up oil. Lots of fumes are created from welding metal together and it’s pretty nasty stuff. My patience with that company disappeared after they started welding aluminum without filtering the aluminum welding fumes.

10. Management are prideful idiots. The dingleberries that run the place have no idea what they are doing and have no idea what it takes to build an automation line. Some of their mistakes cost millions of dollars in wasted materials and all that shit just gets chucked. It’s fucking mind blowing.

I’m sure there’s more but my brains done with this for now. Automation is super cool and fun to watch when all is done and it’s running. It can definitely push out higher production numbers compared to humans. It is definitely not as green or sustainable as any tech company would want you to believe. I believe, from my perspective and experiences in that field, it’s an unsustainable disaster. If it seems like a green alternative, it’s because we aren’t talking about the resource requirements to build, maintain and upgrade automation systems and only focusing on the production output.

Personally, I believe our green alternatives shouldn’t depend on green technology but rather draw heavy inspiration from nature itself. The hard part about that is imagining a life that isn’t intertwined with capitalism, money and hierarchy. Once we shrug off those evils, we can start to observe and listen to nature again.

I had to leave the automation industry because othe reckless waste of resources the automation industry requires. It was becoming an unbearable burden on my mind.

I thought I was being smart by using this company as a way to quickly get my electrical apprenticeship completed. Get in, get out then find somewhere quiet to live. Instead, I got used up and discarded while the entire time being treated like the dirt under a pile of shit. My prize for attempting to game capitalism, even in the smallest of ways.

Since my youth, I had been lectured in school about the dangers of climate change. The only news I ever gave any attention to was environmental news. When I was in my early/mid 20’s, I made many changes to my lifestyle and future plans based on the fact that my elder years would be on a planet ruined by industrialization.

But everything is happening faster than expected. When COVID entered the global scene in 2020 and I saw the disorganized and uncooperative response from governments and corporations, I entered a state of existential dread. Once again, my future plans were cut short. Very short. By emotionally stunted children in positions of power. And the near future these very same people are creating is just depressing.

I don’t do much these days. I keep it simple. I don’t feel bad about how little I do. Small as it seems, doing less makes me feel less disgusted by my impacts on this planet. The way I look at it, if capitalism always demands positive accumulation of productivity and resources then the opposite, doing less, is a radical act of defiance against capitalism itself. I don’t need this justification, it just amuses me. I’m much happier now by doing less because doing less makes me content. On top of that, my mind is plagued with a lot less guilt knowing I’m not actively working against the environment for the sake of making a paycheck.

I’ve had the opportunity to live in Australia and had a chance to learn of the indigenous people there. Their stories and history. I made an effort to learn a bit more about how life was like before colonialists. Or at least what we were able to learn about life before colonialism as a lot of that information is filtered through colonialist eyes.

When I returned home to Canada, I was able to unpack all that I learned from the treatment of Australian indigenous people and apply that perspective to the Canadian Indigenous people. Honouring the land doesn’t simply mean how we treat our food or living sustainably. It includes the nature bound history and stories that communities have created and shared as it moved forward in history. A story of a volcano that was so destructive could live on for many human generations to come as it becomes a crucial story of the peoples that lived in that area. Breaking away from modern perspectives on human histories is difficult because there’s so much nuance that never gets recorded.

I don’t know how fair it is to compare pre-colonialist indigenous people’s behaviour to post colonialism. There are a lot of factors and skewed perspectives that need to be understood before I could talk more on that. From what I have learned, I also don’t think it’s fair to judge indigenous people’s behaviours to new technologies that was introduced after the arrival of Europeans. I feel it’s somewhere on the level of blaming children for the problems of today when it’s always been the adults who exploited and crafted everything there is today. I don’t believe the indigenous people’s ignorance to their own genocide should be their blame. This is just my perspective on things and I still have lots to learn regarding indigenous people and their history. I can always be wrong.

I also feel you quoted me unfairly. Later in that same paragraph I try to express that pre-colonialist life would not be easy, that it would be short and harsher and full of it’s own unique challenges. I’d prefer a short and intense life with daily struggles compared to a long, drawn out existence maintaining complex machines and worrying about the future. But that’s just me.

I remember when cottagecore first came into my worldview. By this time, it seemed to have already been an established aesthetic.

It gave off the same vibes as minimalism to me. A white washed, mass marketed solution for a busy world wanting simplicity. Commodified to show how simple a person can be. Another form of perversion and exploitation of simplicity by capitalism. Just like anything capitalism touches, it sucked every bit of meaning, soul and passion out of the concept of simplicity to sell more soulless junk.

I do agree that behind the aesthetics is a real yearning for simplicity. Technology is abstract and complex. For every bit of technology we add in our lives, it’s yet another layer of abstraction and complexity ontop countless more layers of abstraction and complexity. To me it feels like I am maintaining maintenance for abstract and complex ideas that I barely understand.

If this sounds like the ramblings of a crazy person talking in circles then you are beginning to understand why I feel so insane. I hate it.

I often fantasize about what life would have been like as a pre-colonialist indigenous person. Living in a way that honoured nature instead of controlling it. Observing and learning from nature. A closer connection to plants, animals and everything that lives. I don’t mean to romanticize this way of life. It has it’s challenges and limitations. It would be a harsher and possibly shorter life. I would give up all the modern technology for fewer simple tools, a smaller local community and a closer connection to the land and the life it offers. I want my story of a short, intense and meaningful life to shown on my skin through the scars and tattoos I have collected throughout it.

I feel both minimalism and cottagecore both offer modern approaches to simplicity and fail to properly address the disconnect between modern living and nature. Even before being perverted by capitalism. I’d prefer moving forward a combination of modern understanding and indigenous land practices. Reconnecting with community and nature.

I want people to feel joy the same joy I felt after I created a healthy, living pile of soil for my veggies to grow in. I’ve felt more satisfaction from that than fron any object I’ve ever bought.

Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the ANA, said the negative workplace effects associated with staffing shortages require “meaningful and lasting solutions to be implemented immediately: eliminating mandatory overtime, enforceable workplace violence prevention plans, providing mental health and wellness resources for nurses [and] transparency of nurse reimbursement.”

How would bringing in more people solve anything when the core issues causing this extreme burnout are not being addressed?

I think all that extra money going to the CEO could be redirected to the nurses and their needs to prevent burnout. That would be an effective approach.

I’ve been in a situation before where I went up against something bigger than me for reasons that would affect not only myself but the people around me. It was both shocking and frustrating to find out that the people who would gain to benefit from my proposed actions, were the first to turn their backs on me.

Questioning my intelligence, telling me it’s impossible and a waste of time, telling me to just roll over and accept how things are.

I pushed forward and in the process learned a lot. Understood the inner workings of a social machine. I did so mainly by myself with very little positive support behind me.

In the end, I achieved my goal of removing someone from a position of power. It came at many costs. Some included social exclusion from people who should have been supportive.

Those people were afraid and projected that fear on to me. That projected fear came in the form of anger and resentment towards me. That fear causes people to drag down others who try to improve things. It feels like insanity because it’s hard to make sense of it when everything is playing out in real time.

In the video Ross made, it appears to me that he is being open, honest and realistic of what he wants to do and is asking to learn. He wants to do something for the benefit of others and not only himself. Unsurprisingly, some of the first reactions are to question his intelligence and say what he wants to do is impossible.

Even if he tries and fails, he’ll be a wiser person for it. He’s also a content creator so it’s almost expected to anticipate a follow up video detailing what he has learned. More available knowledge is always a good thing.

As long as Ross and people like Ross who want to make honest, sensible attempt at changing the world, I will be supportive of that. Fracturing our own collective strengths will cause more harm than good.

I watched his video and I get the impression that even he doesn’t think he stands the slightest chance to accomplish anything.

It seems like he wants to learn about something to defend something else he is passionate about even if he has no chance.

At the very least he is encouraging discussion and attempting bring awareness to the issue of live services affecting games and other aspects of modern life.

I’d be wary if he was promising things beyond sensible reason but that wasn’t the vibe I was getting from that video. He seems genuine in the direction he would like to take. He made it quite clear there is no concrete plan and an expectation that nothing can happen or it will end in failure if he even goes through with it.

He is asking and he is trying to learn. If Ross doesn’t understand what he’s up against now, he will after people begin throwing him more information. I get the feeling he’ll make an update video with what he learned and I will be interested in what he has to say.

I don’t fault him for trying. Things are bleak and people are looking for any reason to resist or fight back. Maybe something will happen. Maybe not.

I’m a person who doesn’t enjoy rolling over for the status quo so I’m happy seeing more people wanting to take a stand. Let’s hope he stays sensible.