R.NF

When Sara Weaner Cooper and her husband bought their first home in Pennsylvania, they knew they didn't want a perfectly manicured front lawn like their neighbours. They wanted something that was more than just turf – a flourishing, wild meadow home to diverse species of plants and animals.

Weaner Cooper had always wanted to focus on native plants in her lawn and do less mowing, so rewilding their front lawn felt like the right move. But the Coopers' lawn is a different animal than her father's. It's in full Sun and consisted of over 1,500 sq m (16,000 sq ft) of turfgrass – narrow-leaved grasses designed to look uniform that had to be dealt with before a meadow could fully take over.

Rather than rip everything up and live with a drab, brown lawn for months, they decided to try strategically seeding and planting native plants into the existing turf, hoping it would eventually weed the turf out naturally. "It's easier in the sense that you don't need to be beating back as many weeds," explains Weaner Cooper. "The native plants came in so thickly that they outcompeted a lot of the weed pressure that would have been there if we would have just made it brown."

It took about two years, lots of planning, some careful weeding, and some trial and error, but eventually a medley of waist-high native plant species blanketed their vast front lawn.

https://archive.ph/fno9c

Farming has always been at the mercy of the weather, but recent years have seen unprecedented swings in temperature, rainfall, and storms. Droughts dry up fields, floods wash away seeds, and heatwaves scorch crops. These shifts don’t just threaten harvests—they destabilize farm incomes. Solar energy offers a much-needed anchor. By capturing sunlight, a constant even when the weather is wild, farmers can generate reliable electricity regardless of the season. This newfound consistency helps them weather financial storms even when nature is unpredictable.

Recognizing the benefits of clean energy, many governments now offer attractive incentives for solar adoption. These include grants, low-interest loans, and tax breaks designed to lower upfront costs. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s REAP program covers up to 50% of solar installation costs. Such support makes the switch to solar not just appealing, but financially feasible for small and large farms alike. It’s a win-win: farmers get affordable energy, and communities enjoy cleaner air.

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/43069598

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/43069545

President Donald Trump's administration will move to reduce the impact of his automotive tariffs on Tuesday by alleviating some duties imposed on foreign parts in domestically manufactured cars and keeping tariffs on cars made abroad from piling on top of other ones, officials said. "President Trump is building an important partnership with both the domestic automakers and our great American workers," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a statement from the White House.

Dated: 2025-04-28. Accessed 2025-04-28.

Now that it’s no longer dreary winter I’m finally getting the motivation to do something that isn’t fly virtual aircraft every waking second of my day. I decided to make two wines, one that’s a mixed berry (blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, not sure what else it’s just the berry medley pack from aldi) and a strawberry banana. Sometimes no matter how good or experienced of a brewer you are you make dumb mistakes. Did I get annoyed when my strawberry banana starter foamed over and caused a small cleanup? Yes. Did I think to add a blowoff tube to the fermenter filled with it? No. Did I spend most of today mopping the ceiling? Yes. Originally I wanted to do a lemon brandy rather than strawberry banana, but lemons were stupidly expensive. The plan is for the mixed berry wine to be the girlfriend tax and the strawberry banana to be turned into a brandy for a camping trip I have going on next month.

Gehört eigentlich in die Community [email protected], aber hier sind gerade viele dieser Männer an die Macht gekommen.

Das ist ein Buch, das bei der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung seit heute für 5€ verkauft wird. Zugreifen, solange es die Bundeszentrale noch gibt. /s

Die Klimaerhitzung und die Überschreitung der planetaren Grenzen stellen eine potenziell lebensbedrohende Gefahr für die Weltbevölkerung dar. Dennoch bereichern sich einige Akteure zulasten des Weltklimas weiterhin durch die Verbrennung fossiler Energieträger. Christian Stöcker analysiert, wie dieses globale Netzwerk aus Unternehmen der fossilen Energiebranche, Banken und Finanzdienstleistern seit Jahrzehnten den öffentlichen Diskurs beeinflusst, um noch möglichst lang maximalen Profit aus dem Extrahieren und dem Verkauf fossiler Brennstoffe zu schlagen.

Der Autor beschreibt, wie diese Akteure gesellschaftliche und ökonomische Rahmenbedingungen schaffen und aufrechterhalten, die ihnen Gewinne ermöglichen – auf Kosten der Lebensqualität der breiten Bevölkerung. Dazu bedienen sie sich, so Stöcker, verschiedener Strategien: Sie verbreiten Desinformation, finanzieren Studien oder verheimlichen Daten, bedrohen Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler, fördern einige und diffamieren andere Politikerinnen und Politiker oder entfachen Kulturkämpfe als Ablenkungsmanöver. Anhand aktueller Forschung legt Stöcker die Schäden dar, die aus der so verzögerten Dekarbonisierung erwachsen. Er zeigt aber auch auf, wie der Umstieg auf ein nachhaltiges Wirtschaften doch noch gelingen könnte und welche technischen Möglichkeiten bereits existieren, um diesen zu unterstützen.

Mirror

https://t.me/supernova_plus/38322

Archived

[...]

Giving up the land that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 is also politically and legally impossible, according to experts. It would require a change to the Ukrainian constitution and a nationwide vote, and it could be considered treason. Lawmakers and the public are firmly opposed to the idea.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” said Oleksandr Merezkho, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party. “We will never recognize Crimea as part of Russia.”

Unlike a territorial concession, a formal surrender would permanently relinquish Crimea and abandon the hope that Ukraine could regain it in the future.

[...]

I made a website. It’s called One Million Chessboards. It has one million chessboards on it.

Moving a piece moves it for everyone, instantly. There are no turns. You can move between boards.

What

Well last year I made this game called One Million Checkboxes.

It was a pretty fun time! So I thought I’d do something like this again.

I worked really hard on this one. I hope you like it.

How

This was the most technically challenging thing that I’ve worked on in a long time. I’m going to save a full technical writeup until I see how my decisions pan out, since I think there’s a decent chance I’ll need to make a lot of changes.

But I’ll summarize a few things for you.

• Unlike One Million Checkboxes, I designed this for scale
• The game runs on a single server (!)
• The board is stored fully in-memory; it’s a 2D array of 64 million uint64s
• The backend is written in go. This is my first go project.
• I use a single writer thread, tons of reader threads, and coordinate access to the board with a mutex
• The frontend optimistically applies all moves you make immediately. It then builds up a dependency graph of the moves you’ve made, and backs them out if it receives a conflicting update before the server acks your move.

That last part - optimistic move application with what games people sometimes call “rollback” - is about 1,600 lines of code that took me a ~7 days of fulltime work to write. I don’t remember the last time I wrestled with a problem that hard!

Hey, deGoogle community! I wanted to share my personal experience with quitting YouTube, a journey that has been both challenging and liberating.

Initially, I started my deGoogle journey by cutting back on various Google services, but when it came to YouTube, I found it incredibly hard to let go. I tried using alternatives like NewPipe and FreeTube—both fantastic FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) options that allowed me to access YouTube content without the usual Google baggage. However, despite these alternatives, I still felt trapped in the cycle of daily YouTube usage and the addictive nature of the platform.

To tackle this, I decided to take a more drastic approach. I implemented a DNS block using AdGuard DNS and NextDNS, which helped me create a network-wide blocklist for Google services. In the first two weeks, I found myself turning the DNS off occasionally, creating two profiles in NextDNS to allow Google services when I felt the urge creeping back in. It was a struggle, but I knew I needed to break free.

Gradually, I began replacing my YouTube watch time with journaling and diving into topics that truly interested me, particularly various philosophies. After about four weeks, I was amazed to find that I no longer felt the urge to watch YouTube at all! However, I still have my doubts about returning to the platform, fearing it might reignite my addiction and lead me back into a FOMO (fear of missing out) mindset. To safeguard against this, I’ve kept my no-Google filters active in NextDNS.

I also discovered alternatives like PeerTube, thanks to creators like The Linux Experiment and TechLore, who actively post content there. Platforms like Loop, Pixelfed, Mastodon, and Lemmy have also become integral parts of my online life, providing me with a sense of community and connection without the overwhelming distractions of YouTube.

By de-Googling and stepping away from YouTube, I’ve reclaimed so much of my life. While many tout YouTube as a great social platform for mental health, I’ve found the opposite to be true for me. Without the constant distractions and the pressure to consume content that often felt useless, I’ve experienced a newfound clarity and peace of mind.

Now, I have more time to help my mom, focus on my own projects, and enjoy moments of solitude that have significantly reduced my stress levels.

YouTube can be a helpful platform for many, but for me, it was a different story. I initially thought it would lead me to greater privacy and understanding of FOSS services, but instead, I found myself entangled in a web of privacy violations and creepy policies. The community here has been instrumental in guiding me toward FOSS alternatives that respect my privacy.

I’m curious—does anyone else have experiences with quitting YouTube or trying to? I’d love to hear your stories and insights!

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28834572

To support iOS and macOS devices, an Apple developer account is needed, which costs $100 USD per year. I believe that with the number of sponsorships we have received, iOS and macOS support is now a viable option (even taking into account how much kbin.earth costs to run).

Additionally, I do not have any Apple hardware and plan to use a VM to set up the app initially, so I'll need to figure out how to utilize GitHub's macOS runners to automate the process afterwards.

At some point, I will also need some people to help test the app (both iOS and macOS) using TestFlight before the official release.

If you would like iOS or macOS support, please +1 this GitHub issue (or comment here) so that I have a feel for how much interest there is.