This is a really, really, bad idea.

The issue is that sticky traps are non-specific. Any insect the size of a trip can be trapped. Then when predators are attracted to all the free food, they are potentially stuck or damaged as well.

Thrips are also one of the easiest species to control using predatory species.

Full dinner for my family of 4 at McD’s us $65.

Full dinner at my locally owned restaurant that offers takeout plus lunch the next day from leftovers - $70.

I have gotten flamed a few times for telling the Linux fanboys the hard truth.

If I have to hit Terminal even once with an average setup the OS is not ready for mainstream use. No exceptions. It has to work out of the box on the newest systems.

I use Linux the same way that you have: for a few applications that need a rock solid stable system. Once you get the damn thing setup, it truly is wonderful. Stable, reliable, easy to use. But getting there… Fuck that.

I think I had one clean distro install where everything worked. The PC was 7 years old when I installed it.

Mac did have a better OS than Win 95 -Win98 It was smoother and crashed less.

The difference was that Windows still ran DOS programs, 5.25" floppy disks etc… They made the decision to maintain backwards compatibility.

Mac decided to drop support regularly for what they considered “outdated software and technology.” For example: when USB drives came out they canceled support for 3.5" floppies in their OS. Machines that had a 3.5" drive installed could no longer use it. Put a floppy drive in and nothing happened.

Although Mac was a smoother more stable OS, windows had more functionality and greater compatability. Windows was a far superior product because of it. Even with the regular apearance of the blue screen of death.

Linux at the time also suffered from being a terminal based OS. Too much like DOS for way too long. I used it for specific tasks where it excelled at.

It’s mostly banned in schools today because the kids who fall off the end often ended up injured.

When I was in highschool around 30 teens decided to do it. First crack, three teens who came off the end. One had a broke wrist, the second a sprained ankle, and the third broke 2 ribs.

Most companies don’t bother to setup a shell company. International businesses often have an existing distributors in several different countries.

When one country gets sanctioned a distributor in a neutral country suddenly increases their local sales by the same amount that the one in the sanctioned company used to have.

I used to work in international business a decade ago. I learned about a customer on the Saudi peninsula who purchased a huge amount of product (1,000x more than their entire market). It was strangely enough to cover Iran not that far away across the Persian Gulf.

Sounds like the usual introduction for a new wifi protocol. It’s a niche market until enough devices become compatible. Then a rapid adoption as things reach their normal end-of-life and are replaced.

So wifi 7 will be widely adopted in 5-7 years if it proves stable.

Human intelligence is segmented and specialized. People who are smart at few things are usually very dumb at others. A person who can speak 9 languages can’t do more than basic math. An expert computer programmer, who can’t figure out how to keep a plant alive. Etc…

Polymaths are very rare. Very few people have advanced understanding and skills in multiple areas.

Just some basics about the company.

Revenue Income US$8.93 billion (2022)

Operating income US$4.31 billion (2022)

Net income US$3.32 billion (2022)

The bulk of the difference between operating income and net income in a research driven company is the R&D. They are running at 11% just under $1 billion per year. A publically traded company can’t really hide their research costs, only obscure it for the uniformed.

Their net income is 37% of revenue. So they are paying for over 4 years of research for every year (3 past years plus current gear). So their argument they need the high prices to cover past research costs is pure bullshit. I’d give them the current year and one past year. But 4 years?

This is pure price gouging for profit over people’s lives. Invalidating their patent is fully justified.

In this instance, the publicity is an effort to do more damage.

Ukraine wants the Russian people to know that their tax records are wiped out. Hopefully many of them will skip paying or underpay. This will cut into the governments incoming revenue for many months or even years.

The coyotes in my neighborhood disagree. Let dinner kitty roam!

I have, I grew up on one in Montana. Part of ranching is protecting your herds from predators. We had black bears, grizzlies, coyotes, cougars, and even wolves around. They almost never bothered our herds. The worst predators was the neighbors mix breed dogs that would chase and attack calves. We shot and buried 5-6 of them every year.

Ranching means not leaving your herd out in the middle of nowhere without any supervision. It’s a hell of a lot of boring work, but it’s part of the job. It’s a major reason I got the fuck off the ranch as soon as I could.

Only lazy dumbfuck ignorant morons leave their herds unattended for months on end. Ranchers in Colorado have a hard time leaving their wooly girlfriends long enough to check on their cows.

Current copyright law is ridiculously long. Life +70 years in many countries. So my grandfather’s books who passed away last year, will be locked up until most of his great grandchildren are in their 80’s or older.

It should be moved to a flat 45 years, the expected career length of a working person.

The Mormon church is not setup into separate regional entities like that catholics have done. Their billions are all vulnerable to lawsuits. Instead they have a pet lawfirm that often recommends illegal and unethical practices to squash lawsuits. If the case looks to be going badly they toss higher and higher settlement numbers to get out of it. They do not want to go through discovery and have to disclose exactly how much money they have (est. several hundred billion)It’s been an extremely effective solution so far.

For example: At one point they made up more than 50% of the boyscouts. They had less checks and protocols for keeping pedophile’s out. They completely dodged all the large lawsuits because they were much better at hiding the horrendous amount of abuse.

The Mormon owned universities have rampant sexual assault issues. You rarely see them reported because the victims are punished for coming forward. The university police force is used to suppress these reports as well.

The amount the company must maintain on hand depends on the state. In some states it’s less than 1% of the policies written. Most of the time they only hold enough out of their premiums to cover an average of 2-3 years of claims.

The reason it’s so low is because of federal disaster relief when something big happens. The insurance companies advocate for it to be called a federal disaster. Then the government steps in and foots part of the bill. The poor are usually left losing everything.

The Mormon church is currently joining a long list of other religions taking advantage of people in Africa. The source likely some teenager coming back from their “mission” early.

They send home a steady stream of missionaries for fucking everything that moves. They even have a standard procedure of covering up the illegal assaults they do.

Jail won’t do anything. You have to hit them where it hurts. We need to make criminal behavior cost them personally.

Minimum fine = 100% of all gross revenue generated from the illegal activity. This fine will be paid out of personal assets of the guilty executives first, then sezuire of stocks as assets of the board of directors and major stockholders. If this equals the governments owning a controlling interest in the company, then it is converted to an employee owned entity.

Yep it’s a slurry lagoon aka as a stinking shit pond. Since it’s unlined it leaks massive quantities of nitrates into the soil and water table.

There are three things that I prioritized before investing extra in retirement (after taking advantage of the match 401K funds of course).

Emergency funds/large purchase saving, owning my home, and debt elimination.

It sounds like you have the last one taken care of. Next I would build up an emergency fund and then purchase a home.

Purchasing a home is essentially locking in a cheaper flat rate rent long term. Rental rates in my area are around $1500 per month. My mortgage that I started 15 years ago is $1100. For a home like mine, rents are running closer to $4000. My income in the past 15 years has steadily increased but my monthly bill remains the same. This gives me a steadily increasing amount of income to invest. Of course the best time to buy a home in recent memory was around 2009-2010 after the crash.

It’s the inevitable conclusion of allowing oligopolistic conditions to be formed.

With enough competition, companies are afraid of that one competitor who doesn’t raise their prices. This limits their price increases to actual cost increases instead of higher profits.