My succulent is flowering! There's something about it that makes me think little shop of horrors. I don't normally grow succulents, was gifted a little tiny bit a couple of years ago, left it on the dashboard of my van and it thrived. It's outdoors now for the summer and seems to be loving it

Yeah you're spot on, we all gotta work with what we have. I know people who have no growing space at all but do kind of guerrilla gardening stuff in public spaces. I'm lucky really that I have room for plant pots. Yeah no worries I'll do some updates.

Thanks for reminding me of that! Yeah I've had some success with copper in the past, more than I did with beer traps etc. I've also tried planting suicide crops - marigolds are a good one, slugs fuckin bee line to marigolds. But I'm never quite sure if this distracts the slugs from my sunflowers or if my marigolds bring all the slugs to the yard!

Yeah maybe I should try copper again next year, don't have any copper wire right now so I'm just trying to put pots with vulnerable plants high up where slugs gotta work for it until the plants are well established. A mature sunflower has a kinda hairy stalk, anti slug protection. The challenge is keeping them safe until they reach that stage.

Tbh I feel like last winter was too mild and didn't knock the slugs back hard enough.

Lol that is not a new joke. Part of my family comes from a travelling community, and I first started living in vehicles maybe thirty years ago. You can joke, but it's more sustainable than bricks and mortar. My electric is solar, my heating reclaimed wood. No part of the land had to be concreted and built on so that I could have a home. It's not right for everyone but I believe in sustainable community living and I put my money where my mouth is. You?

Quality staircase, I love it.

Yeah, the bill and Melinda gates foundation does a lot of good work. Doesn't mean bill gates is a good person but maybe there are some billionaires higher on the arsehole scale.

Yeah, turned out I was actually more loyal to the app I was using than I was to the platform. Though I was also pretty good to the platform, I contributed and interacted daily and often spent money buying gold. I tend to take the attitude that if I'm getting a lot of use out of something I don't mind spending a little to support it. That's all in the past now and I wonder how many other paying users they burned.

AMA used to be a pretty big draw for lots of people who didn't regularly use the site and often made international news, but they fucked that right up.

Yeah, this IPO will probably go just fine and a bunch of wankers will make a bunch of money. That's what it's all about, after all.

If I ordered shepherd's pie and it came with any meat other than mutton I'd be unhappy because it's not shepherd's pie. Maybe this is just a regional thing though, looks tasty anyway.

I suspect they're looking into ways to keep their staff loyal, they'll be considering things like controlling the supply of an addictive drug, implanting behaviour modification chips in their brains, explosive collars, holding their kids hostage. Shit like that. Because why else would anyone be loyal to these vermin?

I'm one of those people who reads several books at once, swapping between them depending on my mood and engagement. Currently the great mortality by John Kerry, the salted earth by Jeff Somers, woken furies by Richard Morgan, a journal of the plague year by Daniel Defoe, velocity weapon by Megan O'Keefe, and a couple of others that I may not finish.

I'm pretty sure the figure for heroin is on the high side too. Most people won't have a tolerance, and a lethal dose would be quite a bit lower than this.

Isn't non-alcoholic cider just apple juice? How unfortunate, I love some proper strong cider and there's lots to choose from round here.

I'd probably try something similar if I could, I'm not in the US though.

I'm guessing it'll do pretty well, at least initially. There's got to be a whole lot of investors out there who just want to get in on the new big tech IPO and still jump in. I'm not convinced the WSB crew will really move the dial. Yeah it'd be an amusing and salutary lesson if the IPO shits the bed but I can't see it happening. I'm no expert tho!

"I'm a criminal and now black people can relate to me!"

FFS

They've had investors who were willing to pay into a loss-making company. Could be that they sold investors on the idea that it will be profitable at some point in the future but it needs to be funded while it grows. Could also be that the value they see in it is not just financial - the ability to influence opinion, harvest data, stuff like that.

Why on earth would they give those sweet pre-IPO shares up to the unwashed masses if they thought there was even a remote chance the IPO would at least break even?

I suspect it's because they're worried that their users are going to short them and encourage others to do the same, so they're trying to get them involved and committed. They don't want WSB causing shit. My guess is that the share prices will do pretty well, at least initially. There are plenty of ignorant investors who want to get in on the next big tech stock. Just a guess though, I don't know enough about this stuff to invest in stocks myself.

Yeah, my parents didn't have money for expensive toys either. I had a small transformer that I swapped off a kid at school for all my marbles (including the large steel bearing). It transformed from robot into tape cassette and I thought that was just cool as fuck.