if you live in a place with a definite winter/summer cycle, then if you start with aphid & ant control early on (when it’s still cooler) you’ll have better luck keeping them away. I do realize it’s too late in the season now for that, but it’s something to think about for next year.

a spray with neem oil + castille soap works wonders repelling ants, aphids and mites. though, judging from your photos, it might be very limited in effectiveness. i bought a large spray bottle from the hardware store, mixed up the neem oil (a couple of tablespoons?) and the castille soap (about the same amount - I have a huge bottle of dr bronner’s), filled up the rest of the bottle with water, and I keep it out with my outdoor plants. I live in an apartment and the concrete steps are the only space i have to grow. every spring, most anything i grow outside will get attacked by aphids as it starts to get warm. spraying the undersides of all the leaves early in the morning kills them. do it every morning for a few days, spritzing during the day if you see them bunch up. i try not to do it longer than 5-6 days before giving a break from the neem oil. if it ever gets to that point, i take the entire pots out onto the sidewalk and using a gentle jetstream of water, I’ll shoot the aphids off.

flowering plants will generally attract hornets/wasps no matter what you do. but, if you don’t bug them, they won’t get aggressive usually. and even though they’re al the assholes of the air, they are still important pollinators.

diatomaceous earth works great against external pests like ants too. spread it around in a light dusting where you see them come in, that will work better than making something like a “circle of salt”… ants aren’t hollywood demons haha. it’ll keep out some beetles too and other critters. DE is safe around your cat too, hell, it’s used in baking too.

according to wikipedia, it’s in Alberta Canada.

put the first one on my work tool cart. i gotta mess with the svg file cause i can’t get it to work with my circular stickers (yet).

it’s so great that it’s back up and running! I lurk more than anything but this is my lemmy home. muito obrigado.

anyone have this in a b&w format i can use with my label printer?

threatening unwanted physical harm against friends/acquaintences for any reason is morally bankrupt.

the website is clear as mud, for sure. maybe it’s like lemmy? or mastodon? can’t be sure, and the public demo doesn’t make it any clearer.

we all need to agree on a standard for ‘about’ pages so we can collectively reject those that look like that.

my guess is that they know most people aren’t practicing personal security (specifically by bringing their phones and smartwatches), and it’s easy to collect lists of possible dissidents when they’re all in one general area and digitally trackable.

thanks for the extra extra. I’ve been cycling for my whole life, and have always done the basic maintenance myself. only recently have i felt like tackling the stuff i used to leave to the LBS.

it’s got 135mm, so i’m sure i can fit a 9-speed cassette, i’ve been biasing more and more to a 1x9 since reading your other comment - the end goal of this rebuild is a commuter, and my route is fairly flat and asphalt, so I don’t need a lot of range in the gearing. what’s currently on it is a 3x7, and I’m in the middle ring most of the time as well.

thanks again, i’ll check those resources out

that makes a lot of sense, thanks for explaining it so well!

riding the extremes

by that i meant on the lowest gear and highest chainring, for example. my rockhopper has the original biopace on it, 3x7, and the chainrings are warped; when I’m on the outermost ring and almost any of the gears, it always rubs somewhere, and I can practically feel the chain flexing.

i feel like it’s important to note that this is against the ebay seller agreement, and though ebay does nothing about it if you report it after the fact, leaving feedback with a statement like “this seller drop shipped the item via amazon” helps other shoppers.

generally, though, it’s getting easier to tell: higher volume (we’re talking 1k or higher, usually) of feedback with less than ~97% positive feedback, is a good first indication of some kind of reseller/dropshipper.

personally, i started shopping on ebay to avoid amazon, so it’s a supreme annoyance to have something drop-shipped or gift-shipped through them. I get why some sellers do it, but that doesn’t make it right.

100% agree with what you said. I’m sure the new Leaf is great, but I won’t buy a bigger car. I’m personally willing to compromise with the subscription lock-in bullshit, and even the current generation bullshit, but I won’t at all compromise on size, so when anybody uses terms like ‘crossover’ or ‘hybrid’, then they just lost my interest.

imagine these innovations in tech, but on a smaller car. cool, yeah? so, why isn’t this happening, then, NOW? maybe because they’re hiding something! or maybe because they’ve already compromised on something or are straight-up being dishonest about something.

that’s some typeface, i’m sure of it because each letter is identical.

i use jmp.chat and love it but be aware that they have a list of banned words, and any outgoing sms (meaning that you send out, incoming messages aren’t blocked) containing the banned words will be blocked.

https://blog.jmp.chat/b/sms-censorship

the children STILL AWAKE running around upstairs

there are a few cycling helmets that have magnetic visors. Mine is a Rock Bros, and I have a darkened visor for daytime use, and a yellow visor for nighttime (the helmet came with a clear visor). It’s done just fine in snow and medium-heavy rain, but I have worried about it in very heavy rain.

I also have a pair of goggles made for motorcycling that are made specifically for wet conditions - there’s a foam gasket around the visor and air vents on the bottom. They’re also large enough to wear sunglasses or prescription glasses underneath. I think they were about $30 on ebay a few years back, and looking now, similar items are pretty common.

geet a couple of dry sacks too. Those are the waterproof bags that the open end rolls up and clips shut. I keep spare clothes in a smallish 2L dry sack on my bike.

as an ex-IT currently working at Lowes, they don’t really give a shit about your qualifications, and probably won’t even ask. passing the drug test and background check is about the only qualifications that matter to them.

I commute every other week (I still use a car for the weeks i have my child with me, though the plan is to go 100% car free soonish). I’ve been using both my ebike and an old mountain bike. The last week I rode was about -2C, on this coming monday it’s projected to be -10C. My commute to work is at 4:00 AM, and I return at 2:00 PM. So, it’s dark in the mornings.

For the bikes, I use my mountain bike exclusively when there’s snow or ice. I’ve got studded tires on it, and it’s slow enough to not make it sketchy if I hit a patch of ice and need to stop. My ebike is a small frame cargo bike with 20" x 3" tires and I have a set of home-made studded tires (with screws) but I haven’t installed them yet, so I’m using the ebike only on dry days. Aside from the tires, I have a pair of bar mitts I use on both bikes.

For clothing: I have a skull cap to block the wind that I wear under my helmet, and a neck gaiter to cover my lower face (my helmet is the kind with magnetic visor on it, absolutely a game changer in the cold). Regular clothes, including jeans and on the coldest days I add a base layer under my jeans and that cuts out the wind. I have a cycling jacket and a pair of insulated gloves (in addition to the bar mitts). I keep a wool sweater and spare work clothes in a dry sack on my rear rack. My cycling jacket seems thin, but when you’re pedalling (even with an ebike) it’s plenty warm enough because it blocks the wind. I still get sweaty on sub-zero days.

Regarding the ebike: i only really use it on the lowest pedal assist level. Maybe bumping it up for a left-hand turn at an intersection, or when I’m crossing the major highway when there’s traffic during the day. Though I’m commuting, the journey is part of the enjoyment for me, there’s no damn point to blaze down the street the fastest i can go. So far, the battery has held up really well in the coldest days, though I will keep it fully charged in the winter since everyone says higher charge levels keep it healthier in the cold. In the summer it needs to be charged once a week.

I’ve yet to experience riding DURING the snow, I’ve been really lucky. 100% of my commute is on roads with no sidewalks, most of it is a state highway, and I’m dreading the day we get a major storm as I’m not likely to have enough of the shoulder cleared of snow to safely travel alongside cars/trucks. But, that’s a wait-and-see scenario.

I get the impression you’re not commuting so I realize only some of my details are relevant to you, but I figured oversharing in this case might be more helpful than otherwise.

I’d highly recommend staying active on your bike over the winter, there are so many reasons why it’s a good idea, and the preparation you need to keep cycling through the cold really isn’t that much.

funded quick because of an absurdly low funding goal coupled with a high entry price point, and somewhat deceptive marketing.

blitzkrieg bop by the ramones