When I’m not building stuff… sailing on Hagg Lake made for a lovely afternoon. #grownostr #sailing #yamhillcounty

I have an apartment for rent, in Cornelius, OR. Where should I post it, especially to attract BTC folks? I've got the obvious posting on Craigslist, with a note about accepting BTC (will actually do a discount for BTC and am willing to walk any of my tenants through the wallet setup process if they don't care about BTC and just want the discount) I know nostr has various different clients some of which may be marketplace oriented, any of them suitable for posting housing? In case you're in the area and curious, here's the link. I know I'm posting a link that will go stale on a permanent note, but so be it. https://portland.craigslist.org/wsc/apa/d/cornelius-bed-bath-apartment/7614099427.html #grownostr #yamhillvalley #realestate

Well, this happened today. My first duckling! There are still 7 or 8 eggs underneath the sister pair of mothers. But there was weirdness when they started. One started sitting on 6 and then the nest grew to 19 at one point before they started pushing out rotted ones. My 35 days of sitting ended April 22 but since so many were added after a duck was sitting I’m not convinced they’re in sync. I have tried candeling several times and while I can see stuff, I have no idea if what I’m looking at is a developing duck or developing rot. I’ve also noticed that the eggs I’ve been eating since they stated sitting (from my other ducks) have not appeared fertilized, so I was convinced that I’d be clearing out a bunch of dudds this weekend. Now that one hatched I feel like I should let the rest be until the eggs get pushed out or hatched out. Here’s hoping I know what I’m doing… I’d hate to kill my only duckling. I’m going to be spending a bunch of time building ramps tomorrow as I doubt ducklings jump as high as the adults to get in and out of coops and pond. How soon might they go in a pond? #grownostr #muscovy #permaculture #yamhillvalley

Yesterday the Oregon Senate Republicans walked out to deny the Democrats a quorum. I've got to say, the best legislature is a shut-down legislature. Wish I could zap behavior like that in the clown world, cause "liking" it at a ballot box very few years just feels so dirty. This Senate behavior was after a House clown a few days before made a speech about how 15 year olds are old enough to agree to get castrated without parental consent and not 24 hours later was arguing that 18 year olds are not old enough to own a firearm regardless of parental consent. What can one do but shake your head? I've managed to start the process of tuning out most worldwide current event entertainment, but still feel I need to keep one eye open on local Oregon news. As a landlord and contractor stuff occasionally happens that does directly affect my business. Baby steps... In news that matters, I think the next round of micro greens has sprouted and is ready to move into hydroponics system... #grownostr #yamhillvalley

Somethings just get done for nostalgia. Spent much of this afternoon expanding and cleaning existing bits of my hydroponics system in the greenhouse that has been supplying us with salads all year. Every now and then I would get a hint of jasmine wafting about and smile. One of the first things I planted in the greenhouse even before food crops. So many memories in that scent.

The time is here! The garden beds I’ve been working on in my spare time since last fall are finally ready to be filled. Or put another way, we finally got a dry week this spring such that the pastures are finally drivable. Each bed (12’x3.5’x2.5’) is about 2 buckets full. It’s premium aged horse shit. It will make a significant dent in the compost we’ve generated in the last year. It will need topping off next year as it settles a lot in the first year. Hopefully by then I will have a biochar retort up and running and start incorporating that into our compost setup. #grownostr #gardening

Anyone else heard of the Journal of Controversial Ideas?

Journal of Controversial Ideas

Seems like something I might find worth perusing this weekend. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hurtful-idea-of-scientific-merit-controversy-nih-energy-research-f122f74d?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1 Since the WSJ is paywalled, here's the text as sent to me by my father-in-law: The ‘Hurtful' Idea of Scientific Merit Ideology now dominates research in the U.S. more pervasively than it did at the Soviet Union's height. By Jerry A. Coyne and Anna I. Krylov April 27, 2023 06:05 p.m. EDT Wall St. Journal Until a few months ago, we'd never heard of the Journal of Controversial Ideas, a peer- reviewed publication whose aim is to promote "free inquiry on controversial topics." Our research typically didn't fit that description. We finally learned of the journal's existence, however, when we tried to publish a commentary about how modern science is being compromised by a de-emphasis on merit. Apparently, what was once anodyne and unobjectionable is now contentious and outré, even in the hard sciences. Merit isn't much in vogue anywhere these days. We've seen this in the trend among scientists to judge scientific research by its adherence to dominant progressive orthodoxies and in the growing reluctance of our institutions to hire and fund scientists based on their ability to propose and conduct exciting projects. Our intent was to defend established and effective practices of judging science based on its merit alone. Yet as we shopped our work to various scientific publications, we found no takers- except one. Evidently our ideas were politically unpalatable. It turns out the only place you can publish once-standard conclusions these days is in a journal committed to heterodoxy. The crux of our argument is simple: Science that doesn't prioritize merit doesn't work, and substituting ideological dogma for quality is a shortcut to disaster. A prime example is Lysenkoism-the incursion of Marxist ideology into Soviet and Chinese agriculture in the mid-20th century. Beginning in the 1930s, the U.S.S.R. started to enforce the untenable theories of Trofim Lysenko, a charlatan Russian agronomist who rejected, among other things, the existence of standard genetic inheritance. As scientists dissented-rejecting Lysenko's claims for lack of evidence-they were fired or sent to the gulag. Implementation of his theories in Soviet and, later, Chinese agriculture led to famines and the starvation of millions. Russian biology still hasn't recovered. Yet a wholesale and unhealthy incursion of ideology into science is occurring again-this time in the West. We see it in progressives claim that scientific truths are malleable and subjective, similar to Lysenko's insistence that genetics was Western "pseudoscience" with no place in progressive Soviet agriculture. We see it when scientific truths -say, the binary nature of sex-are either denied or distorted because they're politically repugnant. We see it as well in activists' calls to "decolonize" scientific fields, to reduce the influence of what's called "Western science" and adopt indigenous "ways of knowing." No doubt different cultures have different ways of interpreting natural processes-sometimes invoking myth and legend-and this variation should be valued as an important aspect of sociology and anthropology. But these "ways of knowing" aren't coequal to modern science, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. In some ways this new species of Lysenkoism is more pernicious than the old, because it affects all science-chemistry, physics, life sciences, medicine and math- not merely biology and agriculture. The government isn't the only entity pushing it, either. "Progressive" scientists promote it, too, along with professional societies, funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health and university administrators. When applying for openings as a university scientist today, job candidates may well be evaluated more by their record of supporting "social justice" than by their scientific achievements. But scientific research can't and shouldn't be conducted via a process that gives a low priority to science itself. This is why we wrote our paper, which was co-authored by 27 others, making for a group as diverse as you can imagine. We had men and women of various ages, ethnicities, countries of origin, political affiliations and career stages, including faculty from community colleges and top research universities, as well as two Nobel laureates. We provided an in-depth analysis of the clash between liberal epistemology and postmodernist philoso-phies. We documented the continuing efforts to elevate social justice over scientific rigor, and warned of the consequences of taking an ideological approach to research. Finally, we suggested an alternative humanistic approach to alleviating social inequalities and injustices. But this was too much, even "downright hurtful," as one editor wrote to us. Another informed us that "the concept of merit . .. has been widely and legitimately attacked as hollow." Legitimately? In the end, we're grateful that our paper will be published. But how sad it is that the simple and fundamental principle undergirding all of science-that the best ideas and technologies should be the ones we adopt-is seen these days as "controversial." Mr. Coyne is a professor emeritus of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago. Ms. Krylov is a professor of chemistry at the University of Southern California.

I asked this as a reply, but figured I’d ask everyone out there too. So, as I expect we’ll see many banks fold up, where should I keep a chunk of fiat for the next 2-12 months? Is there a way to tell if a bank is more solvent than another? I’m about to sell a house I flipped so getting a chunk of US Space credits >$250k. This will be used as operating capital for my business and then to purchase some new remodel project when I come across one. Even if the government covers all depositors (or I split between banks to stay within FDIC limits) if I’m in a bank when it goes, I fear there will be a period my funds are inaccessible as it gets bailed out. Because my time preference on this is measured in months but I’m not sure how many months, I’m concerned about the volatility of BTC to keep if all there (not to mention, I’m not even sure where to do a transfer that large in and out of BTC). #grownostr #bankdeath

Been working on plans for my next project. This is a spec build in Carlton, OR. Possibly to be sold as a vacation rental, possibly to an owner-occupant. Looking for any thoughts/feedback on the layout before I dive into tweaking the final details and creating construction documents. This is a corner lot, with the west wall being the front facing the Main Street, and the South (gable wall) facing the dead end side street (side street is only as long as this property). At this point welcoming any and all comments #grownostr #construction #yamhillvalley #realestateinvesting