I've been trying out lemmy as a replacement for reddit. I signed up on the slrpnk.net instance and so far I'm pretty happy there. It's a smaller instance of about 500 with a focus on farming, composting, solar power, living off the grid, building ecologically minded communities - you know, hippy liberal shit. Preppers without the murderhobo, defend-the-castle machismo. Instance owner seems thoughtful and level headed. I know it doesn't matter so much which instance you pick (except you're locked in to what federates with that instance), but I still like browsing local and seeing a ton of content that interests me. Mostly I visited different instances and looked at their lists of communities and applied to the one that had the most communities I wanted to subscribe to.

Lemmy has grown tremendously and has run into some growing pain drama. There was a scuffle where a play-nice instance defederated from two other more wild west instances, because the wild west instances had open signups and were thus attracting a lot of fresh new users who just wanted to get on lemmy as quickly as possible and terraform it into reddit, without respecting the existing culture. So naturally the wild west instances are butthurt that the play-nice instance noped out of their tacky chaos energy. Honestly, it's a bit like they got rejected for a date. Sometimes she's just not into you, dude.

Lemmy has its rough points and right now there's too much breakup baggage that is being brought over from reddit. Why the need to recreate the exact same communities? I watched the shitposting memes ramp up and I realized how draining it is to give them attention in the feed. I'm using jerboa and it's trivial to block subs, so I can just weed out what doesn't interest me. Turns out there's a ton of popular reddit subs that are just noise and I'm starting to resent the attention they take from me. I'm hoping by mid july things will start to shake out, the impatient and demanding will get fussy and flounce off, and we'll begin to see the real lemmy community. But overall, there's plenty of good right now. It's got rough spots and needs improvement, sure, but that's the tradeoff for something that isn't corporate.

Mixed results with my gardening. We're three weeks into june and nothing is growing as quickly as I want and I'm worried I've missed the whole growing season. We've had a lot of cloudy, cool weather and I think the lack of sunshine is stunting my efforts. I planted a whole bunch of morning glory seeds in these planters, but it's been 4 weeks and I only had one leafed sprout. I was blaming the starlings for eating the seeds, and now it's too late to plant more. But in just the past couple days I've started to see more sprouts coming up, so maybe all is not lost. I planted other stuff and so far little success. No hollyhocks. Just one of the poppies is pushing up leaves. The clover seeds seem to be taking in some spots, but nothing in others. Between neighbor cat digging up the new bed and the problems with my arm, it just doesn't seem like I'm getting much return for my efforts. And I still have to finish removing the grass from the main bed!! Honestly, I was hoping to have all the labor done by early june and then all I'd have to do is some maintenance weeding, fertilizing and lawn mowing.

Since my arm is doing better I finished digging all the rocks out of the front flower bed and ripping out the old landscaping cloth. I planted my cosmos and snapdragon starts and tossed a bunch of poppy seeds in there for shits. Hopefully we'll get some flowers before the snow.

The currant bushes have a currant worm infestation and I think they are going to destroy this year's crop. I clipped off some wormy leaves on my side of the fence, but I didn't realize it was so bad on the other side until too late. I read about them online and tried spraying them off with water and I think that just scattered them all over the bushes. I tried a strong application of neem oil and they didn't give a shit - apparently they are resistant to insecticides. I spent an afternoon picking off the grubs by hand and throwing them in a bucket of soapy water - hundreds, thousands of them. My latest thing is to take two palm sized pieces of scrap wood and mash the worms with the leaf sandwiched between. No harm to the leaf, crushes the soft worms. That works the best so far, but I have to say that the smell of worm guts is gross. There's still so many more that I think there's no chance of saving the bushes. In another day or two there will be nothing but scraggly skeletonized leaves. Where are those worthless starlings when you need them? Greedy assholes, there is a banquet of fat worms all over this bush. Gobble them up!

Starlings are worthless. I didn't think it was possible for me to dislike a kind of bird this much. I have fonder feelings for seagulls and pigeons. I had to take down all the bird feeding stuff for the summer in the hopes that after a few months they will forget our yard is a food source, and then when I bring the feeder back I will only fill it with sunflower chips, which they don't like. I deeply regret that bag of mixed seed that attracted their attention.

Spouse and I visited his mom and dad over the weekend. His dad was complaining that nobody was visiting (we haven't been back since christmas) so we made an effort for his mom's birthday. On the one hand it was same-ol', same-ol', but on the other hand it wasn't a bad visit, if one sets expectations.

So MIL needed a hip replacement and there was a problem because she's diabetic but doesn't want to admit it. She had to control her diabetes to get the surgery. She was due for more bloodwork to check for improvement when we saw her for christmas, and then later in January she decided that she was afraid they would vax her without permission when she was under for the hip replacement, so she wasn't going to get it done. Props to her for sticking to her own batshit logic, at least. But now she's not getting a needed surgery and it's very painful for her to get around the house.

There was some political talk, naturally, but I just zoned out and looked out the window at the chickens. What are those chickens up to? I didn't pay attention unless they asked personal, real life questions. We talked about gardening. MIL brought up wanting a tattoo again and I told her flat I wasn't bringing my kit down to tattoo her in her home, and she was quick to say she'd travel to anchorage. She's not getting the hint. I don't think she understands what she's asking for. I tried to tattoo myself with a headache and I threw up three times. If you're already dealing with a certain level of pain (like needing a hip replacement), your body probably isn't going to react well to solid hours of tattooing. I'm sure she thinks she's got a high pain tolerance, but it's not a matter of "toughness". Your body just nopes out. I was explaining to spouse that what she wants is probably going to take several sessions because she likely doesn't have the tolerance to sit for a long time (if she doesn't puke or pass out), plus the fact that she has older, diabetic skin means I have to be gentle and not work it too hard, plus I need her to show up for her sessions and not just bail the morning of and leave me to twiddle thumbs. Nevermind she doesn't want to have a relationship, it's just "give tattoo". Plus I'm stuck there while she yammers about her red hat conspiracy garbage. There's so much that makes this a negative ... So I gave her a neutral "we'll see how it goes" and kicked that can down the road again. She made a snarky dig about me being a control freak, pretty sure because of the tattoo stuff. Like, excuse me lady? You don't know me well enough to crack jokes about that, even if it is true. Fuck me for not wanting to give you a serious skin infection and filth up my kit with dog feces, right?

I can't shake the fact that I'm disgusted that someone who supposedly loves art and talks a big game about supporting artists, and is poor herself and should have a keen grasp of the necessary nature of money, will then be brazenly exploitative. Laypeople do not have a good grasp of the disposable materials that go into a tattoo, so the raw materials cost per session is not something they think about. But it's really weird when they think the compliment of wanting you to draw on them is payment enough, like with their keen powers of observation they've noticed you're a skilled artist but they don't think you've figured it out yet. You want to compliment an artist friend? Mention a dollar figure. Hey, I've got $100 saved up, and I know it's not much, but could we talk about a tattoo? That's how you fucking do it. Watch your tattoo artist friend smile with relief, because 1) they know you aren't a shitty freeloader and 2) now they have a handle on how much work they're willing to take on for you.

I dunno about this thing with MIL. I feel like if I'm honest with her (this is a bad idea, also I don't want to tattoo for free), she'll hold a grudge, bitch about me to spouse's sisters and I'll be persona non grata forever. But if I do the tattoo, it's not likely to end with good feelings on both sides anyway (assuming we avoid medical drama because she passed out or didn't follow my aftercare instructions or who knows what). I don't know why I even care - this tattoo isn't the key that will unlock being buddy-buddy with her or spouse's sisters. They've had over ten years to decide to be friends with me and we're not, right? I mean, we're talking about a woman who didn't have anything to serve family at christmas except jabs about michelle obama. There are no floodgates of generosity waiting to open. I guess I just don't want to be the one that gets the stingy label, especially when spouse is doing well financially and could shoulder the burden of giving her this tattoo she wants. Maybe that's what it is - she just sees me as an extension of spouse and not a person in my own right. She's not really asking me for the tattoo, she's telling me because she's spouse's mom and therefore I'm considered a family resource by virtue of being his wife and therefore under the family umbrella. I think this makes me angrier.

The cherry on the sundae was when MIL described visiting with spouse's younger sister and her family. Spouse's younger sister has tons of weird health issues and was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She's a chronically sick person with no immune system. She and her whole family mask up in public to limit her exposure to illnesses. MIL picked up a piece of garbage off the floor and didn't wash her hands (of course she didn't wear a mask) and their eldest daughter (12) noticed and asked why she wasn't worried about getting sick, saying that they were careful to wash their hands and not spread something to her mom because it could kill her. And MIL, being the considerate, empathic person she is, told the girl that her mom is tough and making a big deal out of nothing and that she needed to expose her immune system to germs to strengthen it. Basically, "just let nature take its course and if your mom dies, she dies." Wow.

Oh gosh, I almost forgot. They want to get into growing mushrooms for health benefits. First it was lion's mane and medicinal mushrooms, then MIL got to talking about psilocybin and microdosing FIL in front of spouse. SPOUSE IS A FEDERAL EMPLOYEE. Puts him in such a bad spot! What if she shows him proof of her grow operation and how she's selling to the neighbors and he is required to turn them in? So incredibly inconsiderate of her. She wants to talk about growing lion's mane or whatever, fine. But shut the fuck up about the illegal shit, idiot. (I think there's too much mold in that house to have success growing mushrooms anyway.) They made a health smoothie during our visit and I had a little bit, but spouse declined, because he told me he was worried his mom would slip something in there he can't have and not inform him (!!!).

Anyway, chickens are pretty fun to watch. I asked her if she'd gotten around to taking the allithiamine I sent her in november. When I asked at christmas, she hadn't, so I left it alone. Lead a horse to water and all. Well, she has been taking it and she does feel like it helps. Said she was almost out and I told her I'd send another bottle. Good!

I thought it was a pretty good visit - better than christmas. We talked about gardening and that was nice. She does know a lot about plants. My bar is low right now.

We continued on our way to Seward, where we got a hotel and in the morning we went on one of the touristy wildlife cruises. Spouse had never been on one - "that's rich kid shit" he says. They're pretty neat, definitely worth the money once for a fairly relaxed experience of getting shuttled around on the water to scenic locations. We saw several humpback whales, gossiped about the tourists in their patagonia and lululemon with their huge cameras, etc. It was a gorgeous day.

After the cruise we stopped by again because MIL mentioned she wanted us to help the nephew get an old couch moved so she could put in a table to eat at. This seemed like a worthy effort. We stopped by expecting to roust the nephew and get to it, but then MIL had changed her mind and didn't want it moved. Okay. Then they got chatty and I just wanted to go home. My shoulder was hurting and it was getting very uncomfortable, but they couldn't seem to take the hint or leave us an opening to escape. MIL started going off about "liberals" and I'm wondering where the chickens are. She knows we're progressives because spouse told her, but I don't think she grasps that means we are solidly with the liberals she's blaming for everything. So I'm miserable, and FIL mentions I look tired, and I take the opening and say that I'm done and going to the car. It's 9:30pm and we have nearly 2 hours of driving to get home. We've been on the water all day. I'm done.

It's such a mixed bag with them. "Why don't you visit?" 'Cause your hospitality is nonexistent and you say a bunch of rude shit and we can't have an honest discussion with you because you just want an excuse to stir up drama to make your lives more interesting. That and the potential lawbreaking.

I sent her more allithiamine in the hopes it will fix her brain. I'm playing the long game.

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Yesterday I did some cable management on spouse's computer. You can clearly see the rat's nest of wires from the door and it was driving me bonkers. I went through our electronics stuff and found the good surge protectors and got the office set up in preparation for hooking up my raspberry pi again. Can't believe it's been over a year since I had a proper computer setup at a desk, instead of fishing out the laptop as needed. I'm excited because I've been reading about some FOSS options on lemmy and it seems like there's a lot of stuff to learn about and try.

I'm noodling with the idea of starting an art group (technically this is the same noodling I've been doing for the past couple years - it just never gelled into anything). I think I am focused on using street art and unconventional art to build local connections and amplify local voices. I'm not interested in a watercolor society sort of thing where people politely paint flowers and landscapes and give each other awards and try to get work in galleries so rich tourists have things to hang in their summer homes. I want the undomesticated sort of art. I think there is power in unexpected art in unexpected places. Banksy knows it. I think artists have the ability to make people rethink topics in a way that slick modern marketing cannot. We're all getting PHDs in tuning out advertisements, out of survival. I think a piece of honest local art, viewed in person, can pierce that veil. How do we as artists learn to speak to our community so it listens? I think there's something worth tapping there, and I think what with 2024 so politically charged, now is the time to start building that network.

Like, for instance, I stole those freebie flooring samples from home depot, and I could paint them and leave them in odd places for people to find and throw away or keep as they please. I'm breaking no laws, but I am using corporate resources to give someone a chance to find art in the wild. Which I like. (I want to do real graffiti but I'm supposed to be following rulez. Also am terrible at running, the cops will def catch me.)

I'm still thinking about the format and how I want it to work.