Simon Belak

Philosopher-hacker. Sometimes theatre director. Making myself obsolete.

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

In preparation for @Lambda_World I talked with @ericnormand about clojure, functional programming, tools & thinking: https://t.co/zkoLi1tdvx

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

Skill issue. I put mine in a 70 year old car and she loves me for it

[Dave ₿🌴 @palmbtcX]

I’m sick of seeing posts about not buying a new car on here.

Are you going to put your wife in a 5+ year old overpriced used car? No of course not, unless you don’t love her…

Grow up.

[Khan Noonien Singh @wtfcetialpha5]

You only think about yourselves.

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@FistedFoucault Pope. This one is more timeless

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@Athens_Stranger Well done and kudos for bringing the tutor model back!

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Put a few rocks in your birdbath. Bees, butterflies, and other small pollinators drown in open water. They land to drink, get caught in the surface tension, and can't get out. A few stones breaking the surface gives them a dry landing pad to drink from.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Nectar is good, but it isn't enough. Butterflies need minerals they can't get from flowers, and without them, the next generation doesn't make it.

Butterflies collect sodium, calcium, and other minerals from damp soil and shallow puddles, a behavior biologists call "puddling."

You can build your butterflies a puddling station in ten minutes. Find a shallow clay saucer at least 12 inches wide. Fill it with sand mixed with a handful of soil or compost. Push a few flat rocks in for landing pads. Add just enough water to keep the sand damp.

Place it in the sun, near your nectar plants, sheltered from wind. Top off the water every couple of days so it never fully dries out.

Skip the fruit some guides recommend. It brings wasps and ants and turns the station into a feeder instead of a puddler.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

You can crash your yard's mosquito population without spraying a single chemical with a Mosquito Bucket of Doom.

Fill a 5-gallon bucket about two-thirds with water. Drop in a handful of grass clippings, leaves, or hay. Let it sit for a day, then drop in a Bti dunk (also called Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, sold at any hardware store as "mosquito dunks," about $10 for six).

Mosquitoes are powerfully attracted to fermenting water and will lay their eggs in your bucket. Bti is a naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a toxin that kills mosquito, blackfly, and fungus gnat larvae only.

This method doesn't harm bees, butterflies, fireflies, fish, frogs, birds, pets, or people. BTI dunks are EPA-approved for organic use and safe in animal water troughs and birdbaths.

One dunk lasts about 30 days. Top off the water as it evaporates. Cover with 1/2-in Mesh Hardware Cloth to prevent animals from getting trapped and put the bucket somewhere shady where pets and kids won't get into it.

The bucket becomes a mosquito magnet and a dead end. Compare that to fogging the entire yard with pyrethroids, which kills every insect in it, including the predators that eat mosquitoes.

Doug Tallamy's Homegrown National Park has been running the "Mosquito Bucket Challenge" since 2021. The more buckets in a neighborhood, the bigger the dent. One bucket per yard is a great start.

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@krus_chiki Update: It's sick. Wife's reaction: "Goes hard!" followed by "can I try it".

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@krus_chiki get your act together. Festival season is here. I need an alpenflage wizard hat

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@krus_chiki OCP will have to do for now

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@HellenicVibes @Tweetophon @RyanHaecker If you want an esoteric reading of Plato, try Kennedy https://t.co/SCq992t3uK

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

Perhaps, but reading Plato just as any other philosophy, completely ignoring the form and that that particular form had considerable tradition and meaning in his culture also feels shortsighted. Especially if one considers the structure of Ancient Greek drama where everyone is at once right and wrong and the full meaning is only produced (or uncovered if you like) externally.

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@_F_Schmidt @patinaresearch Patriot

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@dominbydigdug What do you want to know? I used to have one (and now have a 200).

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@ClassicSpyChic 1st season of SAS Rouge Heroes comes reasonably close

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@FistedFoucault I see you've cashed in those Elon bucks

[Simon Belak @sbelak]

@GeorgeRoush If you don't I will

[RAH-66 COMANCHE @rah_66_comanche]

I met ONE Boomer on this site who had managed to dig his way out of this emotional debt, and what he had to say was fascinating: Huge swaths of their generation felt severe resentment against their fathers because they all came back as war heroes in the biggest baddest most epic war in history, and young Timmy Boomer felt he could never ever live up to that, which turned out to be true as they never got their own great war making them all heroes. So instead, they declared war on everything they could, at home. "Injustice", drugs, the environment even. They're a generation who grew up in the shadows of Achilles and Odysseus and Hector and Ajax, and given no outlet for that whatsoever, and it drove them insane.

[doomer @uncledoomer]

an under discussed phenomenon is how many toys marketed at boys include a small vehicle that pops out of a larger vehicle. but when guys reach adulthood, it's disappointing how rarely this comes up. I think this is why things like this excite the male brain