I'm on day 4 of a 4 day weekend (lucky me!) here in zone 7b, so I've been spending a lot of time out in the garden. The bunnies and deer have been keeping me busy chasing them out, and have entirely beheaded my tomatoes and peppers, but haven't touched the flowers and herbs at all.

We're on week 4 of very little rain (we got about 5 minutes of thunderstorm two days ago, but that didn't do much more than make the grass wet). I set up an automated irrigation system in my garden bed so it is extremely well watered and lush, and everything else is dry, the grass is yellow and the trees are starting to look wilty. I think that's part of what is attracting the herbivores to my garden, it's like a little oasis, so I can't be too mad about it. Luckily it looks like it's supposed to rain every day next week!

My peas are done for the year, so I pulled them out, and I have lots of tiny green peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers, but nothing much else. I'm thinking to plant beans where the peas were. Do you have a favorite crop that is harvested in June that can fill this gap? What sorts of things do you plant in June in your zone?

I've been struggling with herbivory indoors too - the stupider cat decided for the first time that transcendentia zebrina was the best thing ever, and took several leaves off. Luckily it's not very toxic, she didn't actually consume much, and she doesn't seem to be showing any symptoms of poisoning, but now I'm trying to figure out how to keep this plant in the same window but out of her reach. Any recommendations for shelves or hanging baskets that would work in front of a window in a bedroom/office?

I also gave my extremely leggy silver ann pothos a haircut, so it looks much better. I cut the trimmings into 3-4 node sections and they are all now in very damp soil to hopefully root - I got 36 sections so I'm sure I'll have at least some successes, although I'm hoping they aren't ALL successful or I will be drowning in pothos!

I used to like Command & Conquer and similar games, but these days I find it stressful and too fast paced.

I want some recommendations of turn based games that does not have a steep learning curve like Hearts of Iron but it's not too simple like Advanced Wars.

It needs to be for PC and run on a Ryzen 3200G laptop.

This is sort of a "does anyone else?" type question, but I think it can create some interesting discussion.

We have become accustomed to having many things for free online. Search, social media, news, videos, games etc. The price of course is ads and our personal data. But spending money on these kinds of services that exists for free sometimes feels like a hurdle to overcome. I recently gave the paid search engine Kagi a try, and I spent way too much time pondering whether it was worth the $5. Yet I can spend ten times as much on random physical purchases or a round drinks with only a few seconds of decision making.

Even though we have lived with digital products for decades now, having something tangible and physical between your fingers still feels better. With some exceptions, because most people are paying for streaming services but renting movies in the video store have always cost money, so we are used to that - unlike stuff like search and email which many of us have gotten used to being available for free.

Can this ever change outside very tech-minded people? Because services that rely on subscriptions rather than dataharvesting and ads do exist, but with the exceptions of maybe the big streaming services, few get wider appeal and the masses flock to the so-called free services instead. I find it almost depressing that we have all these brilliant and innovative tech companies around the world doing amazing things, but a good deal of it all ends up with the goal of showing more ads. It is hard to compete with free, but is it possible to challenge the current most successful business model of "paying" with ads and data?

I'm very on board with the concept of permaculture, and while I understand the concepts I don't have a good intuition for which plants fix which nutrients. For example suppose I grow basil in my herb garden.

How do I figure out which nutrients it will eventually deplete? How do I figure out a good buddy crop(s) to replenish those nutrients?

Any permaculturists out there that can point me in the right direction?

I was just thinking about it. Tildes' current icon looks like a /r/wallstreetbets graph, haha. I think we could use a nice mascot that's based on a cute animal of some sort. :)

Would love to hear our community's thoughts on this, thank you! :)

My parents are great. That being said, every time my 2.5 year-old comes home it is bananas. They are so over stimulated, who knows what they have eaten. Usually screaming and in just in a state of complete deregulation. I can’t tell if I just need to deal with it as part of grandparent time. We don’t correct my parents, we do offer suggestions and give them food and snacks etc but inevitably what is eaten is some sugary cereal and junk.

Do any of you deal with this? Do I need to chill out? I am writing this as my child falls asleep after screaming for 2 hrs. So I am a still a little frustrated.

A few photos from last night's Cure concert in Montreal.

The set list

Growing up, live concerts wasn't really an option for me. Even if I hadn't lived in the middle of nowhere, I couldn't have afforded it.

This show was everything my teen goth heart could have wanted - a set list that combined their most popular songs with some newer tracks, and some deep cuts that don't usually make it to their live shows. The stage set up was basic but effective, with multiple screens divided by lights that were very effectively used to convey mood and tone. The merch was great too, each city has its own poster design. Montreal's was this adorable cat design.

The audience ranged from small kids with their parents, all the way up to the grey haired set, with everything in between. And for the most part, people weren't stuck to their phones filming - there were moments of snapping pics and taking short clips, but no one spent the entire show filming with their phones. I took maybe a dozen photos and 3 short clips of video, which is about standard from what I could tell.

The band also made the choice to price tickets fairly, disabled the bullshit "dynamic" and "platinum" ticketmaster mechanics, didn't allow reselling for more than face value, and restricted the tickets to mobile only so there was no resellers' market. I wish every band did this looking at you, Depeche Mode. Tickets in Montreal started at $31 Canadian, which meant it was accessible to just about anyone. My floor show seats were $175, well worth it to see one of my "bucket list" bands up close and in person.

Robert Smith made this show for me. He kept up some light-hearted banter in between songs, did some silly dancing while playing, and just seemed to be enjoying himself. At 64 years old, he's put on a little weight and has grey hair, but who hasn't by that age? He (and his bandmates, including Simon Gallup on bass!) performed an entire 2.5 hour set with only a few brief moments between encores, and his voice sounds as good as it ever has.

If you have a chance to get tickets and are wondering if you should, do it!

Hey everyone,
I’ve been messing with complex nested if/then statements in Excel for many, many years, and recently dabbled in VBA. I’ve decided it’s time to learn Swift for Apple. Mainly for kicks, but also the fun of creating an app if I find a need.

For those of you that know these things, what’s your biggest suggestion for learning? Most useful tips? Things to watch out for? Etc.

Thanks!

I've been using mostly C at my current job for about half a year now, and I find myself reusing some little function that I've written for another code base in current projects. I'm relatively new to this, so I'm wondering if it makes sense to have a repertoire of general purpose utility functions and whatnot for future use.

I mean, the language's pretty established and whatever I think of must have been written by somebody else already, so is there even a need for what I'm talking about? Are there well-known open source libraries that resemble what I am talking about? Should I just include them instead of writing my own?

Sorry if this is a bit vague. General purpose as in string manipulation, debug output, buffer operations, implementations of data types not in C, etc., just to name a few examples.

Consider

• A game system with a random success rate of 1% (a) (like a loot drop in an mmo)
• A game system with a random success rate of 1%, pity=100 (b) (pity in this context means the probability of success is changed on your 100th successive failure to 100%)

How long would it take a player to earn an their success given 1 attempt/minute?

The answer for (a) is "infinity" which the community rarely accepts. It is possible (though unlikely) for someone to fail forever, they can. The answer for (b) at most 100 attempts (100 minutes).

Developers can describe (a) as the average player will succeed after a little over an hour (~69 attempts). However the 99th precentile takes about 7.5 hours... and the unlucky 1%? Longer. 1 hour and 7.5 hours aren't in the same ballpark.

Anyone have a solution to cut through the mathplexity? Decisions in their own game design or what they've seen others do? I simply have pities when the odds are worse than 1 in 5 or relegate (a) style probabilities to combat systems (non-reward).

I've got a small collection of equipment. I've been really cautious about buying more. There are a few things I regret buying.

1. A series of knives that were good enough, but actually garbage, rather than just spending £30 on a victorinox or similar.

2. A garlic thing which looks cool but is hard to use. Garlic crusher by Royal VKB

And I was wondering, are there any bits of kit that you thought were going to be great but which ended up in the back of a cupboard or drawer?

I currently have a setup using Google Workspace, StableBit DrivePool, and Cloud Drive.

I recently received notification from Google stating that I will no longer be permitted to exceed their allotted storage limit of 5TB. However, I am currently utilizing over 50TB of storage.

In just one month, my service with Google will be transitioned to read-only mode. Considering my familiarity with DrivePool, I am concerned about the potential for drive corruption if I continue using the service until I find a suitable alternative.

I need help to determine if my drive would be at risk of getting corrupted during this transitional period?