There is so much that can go wrong with human-built bird houses. When I was a very young adult, I worked for a retail bird seed store and learned all sorts of things about backyard birds in order to be able to help customers. One of the things I learned was how specific houses needed to be for each type of bird. One of the major risks was that building it incorrectly would make it easier for predators to get at the nest, for instance. It also mattered where you installed it.

Now that I’m in my 40s, jaded and skeptical, I kind of wonder if some of that was all marketing (oh the wren house is different from the bluebird house so maybe you need both?) but the franchise did really seem to have good intentions. We didn’t make most of our money on that stuff anyway. The real money was in the ongoing fancy birdseed purchases.

Anyway, I can totally see why the material of a birdhouse would matter. I wonder how much good man-made birdhouses are in general?

My gen alpha kids got it in 3rd grade. Or rather one did and one is about to.

The guitar one made me physically cringe because it felt the most damaging. The camera and eyeglasses can be cleaned; the orange juice could be thrown out and replaced. I suppose you could restring the guitar but it just feels like there’s a potential for further damage somewhere on the bridge or the other parts I forget the names of.

Yes! Pretzel buns are the superior bun for holding a burger in your hands. Definitely needs moisture from the other ingredients though. Also they have great flavor. I’m personally not particularly fond of the overly sweet brioche buns.

I still have mine (need it occasionally for work, I’m tied to the work account) but I deleted the app from my phone several years ago and not having it there has really helped me not check it. I never check it. Every once in a while I’ll log in to do something for work, see that three parents from my kids’ school sent me a friend request, accept those, and then split. I’m not sure why I bother; guess I don’t want them to feel shunned but it’s not like they’ll reach me there.

That’s not what they’re saying. It’s essentially a “door ajar” warning. The sensor is what’s failing, rather than the physical part.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussyhat

He was an old-school republican and honestly pretty liberal overall. He’s still far from MAGA as far as I know.

Federal, maybe, but it’s still important to vote for down ticket races, and your presidential vote can at least be a statistic toward the popular vote count. I get what you mean though, I’m from a consistently blue state.

I tend to wonder how these polls are conducted and who is answering them? Does anyone get polls via email or text? Are they still just calling people? I’m in my 40s and basically no one I know my age or younger answers numbers they don’t know anymore, and texts are ignored or flat out blocked because if you respond, they barrage you later, or at least that’s what we all assume.

So I’m not convinced polls have any bearing on what will happen anymore. VOTE!

My husband follows a Facebook group that’s something about “Silicon Valley reinvents the bus” (meaning shuttles) or something like that and it’s a gold mine for the shit these self-centered, egotistical tech bros think. My husband is an engineer, and I work in the arts so very much two different worlds, and I find most of the people at his staff parties to be completely out of touch with the way regular people live. Some of them have good intentions but are very much in their own little bubble.

Anyway I’m glad this is on hold. I hope it fails. They need to reinvest into existing communities, although somehow without furthering gentrification… ugh, it’s complicated.

I’m quite aware; I voted for her!

As a Californian, I’m always surprised when people think Newsom has a chance. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t say I’m a fan but I think he’s done a lot of good (just wish he’d distance himself from PG&E especially) but I always rather assumed that in today’s political climate, anyone from California is considered toxic. Is that not the case?

I don’t want someone to kill me; therefore I believe it is also not okay for me to kill someone else. It’s just the golden rule. I am not a student of ethics or philosophy but it seems pretty straightforward to me.

I would not say there is specifically an upside to keeping a serial killer alive, but there are many downsides to the death penalty both ethically and in practice, not the least of which is the chance that you would execute an innocent person. For those of us who are anti-death penalty, that is usually where we’re coming from.

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Also still accurate for a lot of people, sadly.

I have one of those too. Due to lack of space, my desk is next to the tv and couch, and she gets pretty demanding when she thinks it’s couch time but I’m working.

I wasn’t actually so mad at first. They bought back our smaller cheaper car and we felt very compensated. But for the second car, which was much bigger and more expensive, they only offered a “fix” which they said wouldn’t affect performance (yeah right), and a small amount in restitution. It felt like a slap in the face. In hindsight I would have gone about things differently but let’s just say that I have little to no faith in the way our justice system works anymore due to how we decided to proceed after that, and we will never buy a car from VW ever again.

Meanwhile, we actually replaced those cars with Teslas. And now we feel like we’re kind of back in the same place, having given money to a company that is pretty shit. We try to vote with our wallets as much as possible but there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, after all. It’s just really depressing and disheartening and makes me not want to buy anything anymore.

I’m in the opposite camp. What are the reasons you don’t like Rivian? (I don’t like VW because we had not one, but two vehicles caught up in Dieselgate. They’re dead to me. Which is a shame because I really liked them.)