• 5 Posts
  • 18 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The actual router rented out by the service provider. I don’t think they would be happy with me messing with their property.

    I also lived somewhere else where I didn’t have access to the main router so I use the extender as my personal network for file transfers, a few lights with a couple switches and my terrarium thermostat. If anything happens to the main router, I can just turn my extender into an access point and still have my personal network.

    TP-Link requires an account to use my own extender which annoys me. Their app redirects my connection to my extender through their cloud service. It’s not my VPN because I can still connect through the browser. Seems shadey and I don’t like having the account already.


  • The indigenous people of Australia used fire is a part of their land management. It helped clear the land and managed land between crops, regrowth and wild animal populations. Also, some seed pods require fire in order to open thier pods. Otherwise the seeds won’t be released. I had the opportunity to live in Australia for two years and got to learn about some of this.

    This video nicely illustrates what has been learned about pre-colonial land management by the indigenous people.

    To me, it appears they had a deep understanding of the land. Something that had been developed through careful observation and passed down through traditional knowledge. Knowledge that had been disrupted and destroyed. Leaving behind so many broken people.

    It deeply saddens me to know that such intimate knowledge of the land had been destroyed. It makes me wonder just how much local knowledge has really been destroyed through colonialism or other expansive and destructive forces.

    Even with all that said, we today can still learn from these people. We can still learn from the land around us. We can draw inspiration from all this in order to build a sustainable future. We can start building our own knowledge again to pass down to our future. It doesn’t have to involve raking our leaves and shipping it somewhere else that’s out or sight and out of mind.

    My hate for mowing and raking runs pretty deep.



  • I’ve never seen anyone rake s forest floor and the forest seems to be just fine. Nature has been doing it’s own thing for a couple years and seemed to have figured out what works.

    Us humans could learn so much about the world if we spent more time observing it in action. Instead we spent our time bending it to our will. Disrupting beautiful complexity while blissfully unaware of future consequences. Replacing nature with unadaptable machines that are high in maintenance. Machines which are prone to wearing out and breaking down. Replacing nature with our own complexity that doesn’t break down as nicely as a leaf or branch.

    Nature in action is beautiful in it’s own right. No one should be judged for spending their precious time on this world observing nature. It’s a wonderfully complex and adaptive machine with many moving parts and doesn’t require any synthetic lube to run.







  • I bought a Raspberry Pi a few months ago and I feel strangely prepared. I wanted to use Home Assistant to have greater control over my devices since Philips Hue’s app seemed limited.

    I feel like a sucker for falling for Philip’s marketing but at least I can use zigbee. I have now decoupled myself from their Hue Hub and app. Unfortunately I now have a wasteful hub sitting around. I have it posted for free on the classifieds in hopes it will disappear.


  • I have a meeting tomorrow morning with a mediator and representatives from my old company with my lawyer tomorrow.

    I’m trying to get my job back since they fired me in response to bringing up issues of abusive behaviour in the workplace. They are trying to get me to back down and disappear.

    I have mixed feelings. A part of me wants my job back. The act itself would spit in the face of the general manager who is rotten to his very core.

    The other part of me thinks I’ve done enough damage and can safely call it quits by taking a money offer. I exposed to corporate just how awful management at my company was and in response to my firing, corporate has forced several costly updates to work flow practices at the company, cracked down hard on all the unsafe work practices, refused to represent them in my labour board reprisal claim and forced the HR manager to retire ahead of her scheduled retirement plant (I assume, it’s convenient she retired a month after my claim was officially filed and not in 2024 as scheduled).

    Tomorrow I’ll have to pick my battle carefully. As much as I’d love to drag this company to the human rights tribunal, I’m also pretty tired and should consider taking the wins I already achieved.

    Bureaucracy is fucking lame.




  • I recently recieved a bit of offhand news that has made me a lot more relaxed about an important meeting I have at the end of September.

    I was speaking with a person I used to work with about a trip he and his fiancé took recently when he caually mentioned out of nowhere that the HR manager at work retired at the end of July. That random little fact sent my mind into a whirlwind for a couple days.

    Just over a year ago I had been terminated from my job as an apprentice at a place that builds automation assembly lines. That termination came after I had brought up concerns and frustrations with how the company had begun treating people after covid arrived. I also brought up concerns about workplace culture and how toxic it had become.

    I had been terminated approximately 10 months after the monthly employee meeting where I first confronted the GM (General Manager) about how apprentices were being treated poorly and not learning the proper skills. This is important because once people start retiring, there is going to be a huge skill and knowledge gap.

    After that monthly meeting, I had a meeting with the fairness committee followed by a meeting with the HR manager with the fairness committee member on “my side.” That second meeting was basically me getting belittled and blamed for 3.5 hours.

    Unhappy with the results and dealing with my declining mental health, I reached out to the corporate HR manager about the abusive management at my company and this manager made a huge effort to help me. She taught me all my rights as an employee, encouraged me to get help through the corporate employee hotline and when that failed, set up a meeting with me and her boss while beginning an investigation into the abusive environment at my company. Unfortunately before that meeting, my company terminated my employment.

    I retained a lawyer and after about a year of some back and forth (things got delayed significantly because my lawyer got covid) I finally submitted my wrongful termination case against my company to the labour board. Up until this point I felt so uncertain and stressed about everything and was really doubting my decisions.

    About a month after my submission to the labour board, my company replied back with 16 pages trying to have my case thrown out and attacking my character. They also responded through an outside law firm and not the corporate in-house lawyers. About 1.5 months after my submission, the HR manager retires. I found out she was scheduled to retire in 2024.

    Suddenly my mediation meeting with the labour board and my company doesn’t seem so intimidating. Corporate refused to legally support my company and the HR manager retires early and is now back home in Central America. A key figure in all of this who conveniently will not be able to attend the labour board meeting.

    I have no idea if those two things are related to my case and I may never truly know but it sure is convinient for me. I did leave that company in good standing with corporate so I’m left to believe that corporate has been taking serious action with my company. Action that may have also included updating workflow, security and logistics (costing the GM and management huge money), and cracking down on workplace safety issues (costing the GM and management even more money).

    After covid arrived, my dislike of corporations only grew but I think it’s pretty humorous to watch corporate turn it’s back on my company. It’s beautiful in it’s own bureaucratic-hellscape kind of way.

    My goal at the labour board meeting is going to get my job back and hopefully getting a public apology at the monthly employee meeting while sending a problematic manager to a training course regarding abusive behaviour. After being forced to confront my own mortality through their abusive and negligent behaviour, money means nothing to me. No amount will bring back the dignity this place took from me and the others who work there. I’m hoping my actions are able to throw some power back into the hands of the employees and other workers there as well as bring more awareness to mental health issues.

    And to think, I probably wouldn’t have gone down this path if it weren’t for the head fairness committee member telling me that I should just suck it up. That I should just wait for all these problematic people to retire. He told me I couldn’t change anything. His attempt to de-escalate the situation by demotivating me may have backfired slightly.


  • We may never know the true intentions behind the attacks because we aren’t Orcas. That should not mean we must escalate the situation between humans and orcas. Using more noise and susbtances to fend off one species may have unintended affects in other species or ecosystems.

    If they are targetting objects that are luxuries of humans (for example a boat or yatch) then we humans should consider just not participating in those activities. We should not be introducing more sophisticated solutions which may come with even more unforeseen consequences. In this case, I believe less is more. The less we humans invade their space, the less likely either human or orca is to be injured or killed. If this is just an Orca cultural fad then it may mean this destructive behavior will disappear quickly if they are left alone.

    Human enjoyment or satisfaction does not have to come from distressing or endangering other life. Sentient or not.

    Regardless of Orca intention or perspective, I’m still rooting for the Orcas. It’s their home. We humans have caused way more damage to their homes than they have to our boats and yachts. Their damage to our stuff is totally justified in my eyes.


  • I don’t think it has to do with a “whales are sacred” mentality. Humans with our modern technologies are invasive, loud and destructive. We travel across the whole world in loud, dangerous, harmful and polluting vehicles. We also take from this planet far more than we return with absolutely no respect for the complex and diverse yet fragile ecosystems we live within.

    Here we have a species of dolphin that are working together to try and stop another invasive species from threatening their home. Humans have a long and rich history with the sea but we are still land animals that are invading and disrupting their home and way of life. These Orcas are defending themselves. As humans, our reaction should be to acknowledge their right to defend themselves and leave their home alone. We should not escalate by introducing even more noise and substances. Instead it would be wiser to look within ourselves and see that our luxuries should not be causing so much distress to other sentient life.

    I personally believe the Orcas and any other wild life have the right to defend their home just like any indigenous people who want to live in balance with nature. We should be stewards of this planet and respect the life it gave us by respecting the life around us. We should not be waging active or passive wars on everything above or below the waters.



  • This year I built a vegetable garden and purposely seeded the top soil with clover. The garden has become more wild and “overgrown” looking but I think it adds a bit more wild beauty to it. There’s a list of reasons why I chose to add clover as ground cover including:

    • Clover bringing nitrogen into the soil
    • Clover roots to help loosen the soil to make it easier for my crops to spread their roots
    • By creating a barrier to retain moisture in the soil
    • To promote a place for microfauna to live within the soil. Healthy soil is alive with small bugs like springtails who feast on mold and funguses and poop out nutrients that are easily absorbed by plant roots
    • To promote a place for larger insects like isopods and beetles to help break down organic material. Similar to springtails, the waste, as well as old molts and waste from dead insect bodies help feed plant roots.
    • Clover roots will help loosen any compacted soil allowing crop roots to spread easier
    • When planting new crops, you can simply dig up an area of clover and mix it back into the ground. By doing this, you are turning that clover into fertilizer as it gets broken down by insects and microfauna
    • All parts of clover are edible. Strange to even think of it as a weed in my personal opinion

    Something important that modern agriculture seems to overlook is soil health. Healthy soil is alive with microfauna and microfauna is diverse and complicated like any other ecosystem. The soil will be more like a desert without ground cover because there’s no safe places for all the tiny life that gets easily overlooked. I even added some large stones and stepping stones because insects love hiding under things like that. My goal is to promote enough life to ensure a healthy, living soil that won’t rely heavily on outsourced fertilizers. Composting would be a great compliment to my garden if I got off my ass and built one.

    Modern agriculture and farming/gardening practices rely too heavily on outsourced fertilizers and seems to disregard soil health altogether. It’s quite sad to see how damaging and nutrient draining monoculture crops are to our precious top soil.

    The whole idea of using clover as ground cover is a mix of knowledge from indigenous histories, my bioactive terrariums I have as a hobby and other random bits of knowledge gathered from the internet over the years. This is the first year I’ve tried using clover as ground cover so I have yet to see how effective it all is but it’s a beautiful experiment in progress at least. Since I added fresh compost and horse manure this year, everything is growing great so I won’t be able to properly assess things until next year or the year after but I look forward to it.