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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • It’s hard to overstate what these guys see. If you’ve ever experienced this magnitude of disaster, you know damned well that all the pictures and video in the world doesn’t do justice to the actual destruction and suffering on the ground.

    Ex-FIL was in the Mississippi Guard. Earned 2 Bronze Stars on two (three?) tours of Iraq. Humanitarian aid, not combat, a detail relevant to the story below. He was just fine.

    Came home and fought his way through Katrina on the tip of the spear. Those men chainsawed houses in half and pushed them off the road to get in. After all that he suffered PTSD, hooked up with another Guard member, left his wife of 32-years and stopped talking to his only child. He was not fine.

    New Orleans got the news coverage, but the Mississippi Gulf Coast was fucking wrecked. We went to see the man in Gulfport, then headed north. The last of the damage we saw was past Hattiesburg, 80 miles of destruction. And that was going straight away, the blast radius closer to the Gulf was wide.

    Some of these people are digging for corpses, some are little corpses, with their hands. Many, most?, of these people are facing serious PTSD in the near future.

    Anyway, after living Ivan, I cried my eyes out over Katrina. I still tear up when I think about it, still cry thinking about what I saw the next morning. Cried when the Florida Guard rolled in to save our asses, thought I was on my own.

    Taking the kids swimming in the creek now. I’m out.


  • American, white, liberal, redneck gun nut here. If you’re talking about “defund the police”, that’s yet another idiot liberal slogan that misses the mark. The idea is to take police funds and pay for workers who can handle situations police should never have been sent to. Want to kill yourself? Call the cops!

    The far right loves cops because cops are on their side, or are perceived to be. To put it bluntly, guns are for shooting marauding black people, not white people. See all the stories about white people being shocked when law enforcement doesn’t go their way? Yeah.

    Also, I suspect people who are anti-gun have never had violence inflicted upon them, or cops who are far away, or haven’t had a bear wander in the dog door, or haven’t had an enraged redneck struggling to be polite because they’re visibly armed. In related news, my MAGA neighbor came stomping down here to kick my ass, turned right the fuck around when I went inside for my .45.

    I could write all night on the subject, but let me leave it at this: Now is not the fucking time for Americans to disarm themselves. The only reason fascists haven’t run us completely over is that they know there will be a real chance we’ll fucking kill them. Look where the ICE raids are happening, in the places where guns are the most suppressed.

    Yes, this all sucks, but it’s where we’re at in America.




  • In the US our colleges and universities typically have what they call extension offices that can tell you all about the local environment. Anything like that where you’re at?

    From Gemini, but it’s factual:

    A local extension office, often called a Cooperative Extension office, is a branch of a land-grant university that provides research-based information and educational programs to the local community. These offices are staffed by experts who offer guidance on various topics, including agriculture, gardening, food safety, natural resources, and 4-H youth development. They act as a bridge between academic research and practical application, helping individuals and communities solve problems and improve their lives.

    Lots of great advice here! I’ve learned the most just by getting out in the woods and swamps and looking. Still so much I’m ignorant of! A great project for you, that I’ve been slacking on, is putting events into a calendar or tracking app. “May 15th, dragonflies are back.” “June 1st, banana spiders back.” Stuff like that.




  • Let me rant a little on the TSA. There are strict rules for flying with guns and ammo, clearly spelled out on the TSA site. Great! As it should be!

    Pensacola didn’t give two fucks, just made sure I had dual locks and asked if my ammo was boxed. Yep!

    I get to Tulsa and the agent wouldn’t check my ammo because it wasn’t in this exact box. It was loose in the fucking box it came in.

    Small arms ammunition (up to .75 caliber and shotgun shells of any gauge) must be packaged in a fiber (such as cardboard), wood, plastic, or metal box specifically designed to carry ammunition and declared to your airline.

    (And no, your magazine or clip does not count as packaging. Don’t play like that.)

    I said fine, throw it out, I gotta go. Nope. “Sheriff has to take possession.” Fine! Give it to the cops when they get here. Bye!

    Now here’s the rub: You cannot argue with a TSA agent. They have total authority to make any call they like. Orders conflict with what’s on the TSA site? Too fucking bad, their call. I get the rule giving them discretion on the ground, but fuck me it turns some of them into little Nazis.

    I’m particularly salty because this was during COVID, which mom died of while I was waiting at DFW, and ammo was unavailable at any price.